Diagnosis Murder 7 - The Double LIfe (10 page)

They parked in front of the emergency room entrance and hurried into the hospital, where they were met by a young doctor who looked so much like Jesse, Mark almost called him by name. But it wasn't Jesse. The doctor's name was Carl Kozak.

"Thanks for coming down so quickly, Dr. Noble," he said, leading them towards the trauma room.

"What are the headlines?"

"The woman is twenty-eight years old and in her late third trimester of pregnancy," the doctor said while on the move, referring to his notes. "She was driving through an intersection when she was struck by a drunk driver who ran the red light. She's suffered massive head injuries."

"Is she brain-dead?" Emily asked.

Dr. Kozak nodded. "We have her on a ventilator. I think there's a strong chance we can keep her alive until the baby comes to term."

"The drunk driver?" Mark asked.

"Dead on arrival," Dr. Kozak said.

It was a sad and horrible situation, but one Mark was painfully familiar with. The last thing Emily needed to deal with going into surgery was having to pass this terrible news on to the woman's family. Mark decided he'd volunteer to handle that burden, one he'd carried far too many times in his career.

"Where's the father?" Mark said.

"He's dead," Dr. Kozak said.

The tragedy kept getting worse.

"Was he killed in the accident?" Emily asked. "Or did he die here?"

"He died here," Dr. Kozak said. "But not in the accident."

"I don't understand," Mark said.

Dr. Kozak turned to him as they reached the trauma room doors and hesitated. "There is no easy way to say this, Dr. Sloan. The father was Jesse."

"No," Mark said, the word coming out as an anguished wail. He pushed open the doors and marched into the trauma room to find Susan on the table, her face so bloodied she was almost unrecognizable, a breathing tube down her throat.

"Please God no," he said.

Emily put her arm around him. "Mark, maybe you should go."

"I can't believe this is happening," he said, closing his eyes.

"Neither can I," she said. "Now we have to concentrate on saving the baby."

His head began to throb, each pulse a blinding stab of agony. He dropped to his knees, clutching his head.

Emily and Dr. Kozak were beside him, but he couldn't see them. He couldn't see anything. He couldn't hear anything except the thunderclaps of pain in his head. It felt like his hands were all that was holding his skull together, that if he let go, it would explode into pieces.

And then it did.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

Steve Sloan rushed into the ER, nearly colliding with Dr. Kozak as he came through the door.

"Where's my father, Carl?" Steve demanded.

"He's on his way to the OR," Dr. Kozak said.

"They're operating on him? Why? What happened?"

"I don't know the details, Steve. You'll have to wait until the attending physician comes down in a few minutes." 

"Who is it?" Steve asked.

"It's Jesse," said a nurse, coming up behind him.

Steve turned to see Susan Travis standing behind him in her blue nurse's scrubs, her face etched with concern.

"I thought my father was stable, that all he had was a concussion and that he'd be coming around soon," Steve said. "That's what Jesse told me this morning, right after the attempt on Dad's life."

"There have been some complications," she said, touching him lightly on the arm and gently leading him towards the chairs in the waiting area.

"What kind of complications? Tell me."

"It's better if Jesse does," Susan said. "He hasn't left Mark's side since he tackled him out of the way of that car this morning."

"I would have been with Dad, too," Steve said, "but Jesse told me to go. He told me Dad's injuries weren't serious."

After spending an hour that morning at Mark's bedside, and at Jesse's urging, Steve had decided he wouldn't be helping his father by maintaining a vigil. Mark would want him out on the street, trying to catch the person responsible for his injury. That's what Mark would do if the situation was reversed. In fact, that was exactly what Mark had done when Steve was seriously wounded in a shoot-out.

"That came out all wrong. I didn't mean that as a reproach," Susan said, taking a seat. "I'm just saying that Mark is in good hands."

"I never doubted it," Steve said, sitting down beside her. It was the truth. Although he often teased Jesse, he had great respect for his medical skills. After all, Jesse had learned from the best.

"You might want to tell Jesse that. He's blaming himself for what happened."

"It's not his fault," Steve said. "Jesse saved Dad's life." At that moment, paramedics charged through the ER doors, wheeling a bloodied man on a gumey. Susan left Steve and joined the other nurses running alongside the gurney into the trauma room.

Sitting there alone, Steve finally had a moment to rest, to reflect on the chaotic events of the day, which began when he got a frantic early-morning wake-up call from Susan at his girlfriend Lissy's apartment.

"Your father has been hurt," Susan said. "Someone tried to run him over in the parking garage."

Steve drove with his siren wailing, weaving through traffic and blasting through red lights, arriving at the hospital within ten minutes of getting the call. He found Mark unconscious in the ER, an IV in his arm and Jesse tending to him at his bedside.

Jesse told him about tackling Mark out of the path of a car and that it wasn't an accident. There was no doubt in Jesse's mind about the unseen driver's murderous intent. "But it wasn't the car that hurt Mark," Jesse said. "It was me. I don't have your experience in tackling people. I'm usually the tackle-ee. I took him by surprise from behind, so he never had a chance to break his fall. His head smacked right against the pavement."

"You knocked him out of the way and didn't get run over yourself. If you ask me, that's a perfect tackle," Steve said. "Is he just out cold or is it more serious than that?"

"Although there's no sign of a cracked skull or internal bleeding, he does have some minor brain swelling."

"Does this mean he has brain damage?" Steve asked. 

"No, it's to be expected and nothing to worry about," Jesse said. "He may even be dreaming now."

"So what do we do?"

"We wait. Concussions are unpredictable and vary from person to person and injury to injury. Mark could wake up in a few minutes or a few days. There's no way to tell. But we'll monitor him very closely, and we'll call you if there's any change in his condition."

Steve nodded, chewing nervously on his lower lip. Someone obviously wanted Mark dead, but who? And why?

As far as Steve knew, Mark wasn't working on any active homicide investigations, and none of the murderers he'd put away had been unexpectedly released from prison on appeal or parole. Of course, that didn't mean one of them hadn't arranged a little vengeance from behind bars.

"Did Dad say anything to you before the attempt on his life?"

"He had The Look," Jesse said.

"What look?"

"The
Look," Jesse said.

Steve knew The Look. It was the intensity in Mark's eyes when he'd reached the point in his investigation that he knew his adversary, if not by name or face, then by evil intent.

Now Steve had to somehow reach that point himself. "What did Dad have you doing for him?" Steve asked.

"Going through hospital records, searching for anything in common among patients who'd died shortly after leaving the hospital for treatment of critical medical conditions." 

"Like Grover Dawson," Steve said. "The guy who died standing at attention."

"So to speak," Jesse said.

"How many patients are we talking about?"

"About eight hundred died within a year, forty-eight within ninety days."

"That's an awfully big job with nothing to go on," Steve said.

"Mark was concentrating on the forty-eight," Jesse said. 

"It could still take you weeks to find anything—and that's
if
there's actually anything there to find beyond the occasional coincidence. That's a big
if."

"Mark loves big
ifs
," Jesse said wearily. "But I got the impression this morning that he might have found the key to narrowing the search."

"I don't suppose he gave you a hint?"

"Just The Look," Jesse said. "And the promise of a free lunch."

Once Steve left Mark's bedside, the first thing he did was to go to the doctors' lounge, commandeer the VCR, and watch the surveillance footage from the parking garage security cameras. If Jesse had waited a fraction of a second longer to make the tackle, Mark probably would have been killed. Even so, Steve winced every time he thought about Mark's head hitting the concrete.

The tinted windows of the Camaro were too dark for him to make out the driver, but the assailant had done nothing to obscure the license plate, which led Steve to assume that the car was probably stolen. He called the plate in and, within thirty seconds, found out he was right. The car was reported stolen the day before in Canoga Park.

He sent officers to interview the owner of the Camaro and canvas the neighborhood where it was stolen to see if anyone might have caught a glimpse of the thief. He also put out an APB on the car.

Meanwhile, crime scene techs were scouring the hospital parking structure for clues, and officers were interviewing everyone in the building, aside from bedridden patients, on the off chance that they'd seen something.

Steve was still watching the tape when Amanda came rushing in, distraught over the news about Mark and anxious to do whatever she could to help. She explained the research Mark had had her do, which made Steve smile. His father loved to put Amanda and Jesse to work beating the bushes for clues. And they gladly did it, not so much because they shared Mark's love of homicide investigation but out of respect and loyalty to him. They would do anything for him.

And Steve was sure they would do anything for him, too, as he hunted for Mark's would-be assassin. He intended to take full advantage of their willingness to help, because he doubted his superiors at the LAPD would authorize him to devote any additional manpower or resources to the case. He'd probably catch hell for the legwork he'd already assigned to uniformed officers.

It wasn't just because the chief of police wasn't fond of Mark and resented his intrusions into areas of LAPD responsibility. The case wasn't really big enough to merit the kind of effort Steve wanted to put into it. At least not yet.

It was clear to Steve that Mark was investigating Grover Dawson's accidental death and others like it, despite the fact that there wasn't a shred of evidence indicating foul play. A visit to Mark's office and a peek at his appointments and the notes on his desk confirmed that was what his dad was up to.

Steve couldn't make sense of the notes, but he tracked down the three doctors whose names were written on Mark's calendar: a cardiologist, an epidemiologist, and a sociologist.

He was most intrigued by Dr. Tanya Hudson, the sociologist.

What did his father want from her? Steve went to see her at UCLA to find out.

Dr. Hudson was a tall, thin redhead in her thirties who was trying hard to dim her beauty and look more academic. But the glasses, prim suit, and plain hairstyle failed to hide her perfect figure and angular features. She looked to Steve like a
Baywatch
lifeguard trying to go undercover as a psychiatrist.

Her campus office in Franz Hall was tiny, cramped, and choked with books and papers, so she suggested that they talk in the plaza outside.

They took a seat on the brick bench around an inverted fountain, where students sat studying, chattering on cell phones, and dangling their bare feet in the water cascading down into a burbling hole.

"I don't get the point of inverted fountains," Steve said. "They remind me of gigantic toilet bowls that never stop flushing."

She laughed, and Steve was pleased with himself.

"I've never thought of it that way. Now, I fear, I'll have that image in my head every time I see this fountain," she said. "Which is daily. So thanks a lot."

"My pleasure," he said.

"You said on the phone that you urgently needed to talk to me about your father," she said.

He told her briefly about the attempt on Mark's life. "I'm trying to retrace my father's steps and figure out what he was onto. That's why I need to know why he met with you and what you told him."

"I hope he's going to be okay."

"He's probably out of bed already, examining the tread marks the car left behind," Steve said, though he knew it wasn't true--Jesse would have called if Mark had regained consciousness. But Steve wanted to put Dr. Hudson at ease.

"Dr. Sloan was interested in my research. For the last three years I've been hanging out in prisons and mental institutions interviewing doctors, nurses, and other caregivers who've murdered their patients."

"Is this for a book?"

She shook her head. "It's for a study, but I'm also trying to create a profile of these mercy killers, angels of death, and murderers with stethoscopes. Your dad has been very supportive of that effort. I want to help hospitals recognize the warning signs in certain individuals
before
they strike." 

"You think you can screen for killers on an employment application?"

She smiled. "You're a very cynical man, Lieutenant." 

"It's a requirement of my profession."

"I think there are certain patterns of behavior typical of these kinds of individuals."

"For instance?"

"It would take me three hundred forty-seven pages to answer that question," she said. "Or you could just read my study."

"I'd prefer to listen to the abridged audiobook version." 

"First, you need to know that there are several kinds of medical murderers. There are, of course, the ones who give patients fatal injections or smother them out of a misguided sense of compassion."