Diagnosis Murder 7 - The Double LIfe (9 page)

"So you're saying I'm the one who should be surly," Emily said, giving him a smile.

"I'm frustrated, that's all. I don't like having to play catch-up in this investigation. Not only do I have to figure out who the killer is and what he's thinking, I have to figure out who / was and what / was thinking. It puts me at a huge disadvantage."

"Talking to Dr. Barnes and Dr. Dalton didn't clarify things?"

"Not really."

"But at least you know there
is
a killer."

"I was already working from that assumption, which was confirmed when someone tried to run me over and got Jesse instead," Mark said. "I still have no idea who or what I'm looking for. But at the same time, I feel this nagging itch in the back of my mind, like there's something I'm missing." 

"Two years."

Mark shook his head. "No, it's not that. It's something right in front of my face that I'm not seeing."

She gave him a look. "Maybe it's me."

"It's the case," he said.

"How can you be sure?" she said. "How do you know it's not some memory trying to claw its way back to the surface?"

"Because this feeling is something I've felt before on other cases."

"It's something you
remember
feeling before. It's a memory as much as it is a feeling. It may be a whole bunch of memories rising from the murk."

"That would be nice," Mark said.

"Yes, it would," Emily said. "Where to now?"

"You could drop me off at the hospital and I could pick up my car."

"Why would I want to do that?"

"So you wouldn't have to chauffeur me around," Mark said. "I'm feeling fine. My eyesight is good. It's safe for me to drive."

"Trying to get rid of me?" she said lightly.

"I just thought you might be anxious to get back to your work."

"I want to be with you. I want to help you solve this case and then recover your memory so we can continue our lives together," she said. "Nothing is more important than that to me.

Mark nodded. "Okay. In that case, we're going to West LA."

"What's there?"

"Grover Dawson's place. So far I've been working from the present and going backwards. Let's start from the past and go forward. Probably the first thing I did was visit the scene of the crime to see what I could learn."

"Makes sense," Emily said.

"It's about time something did," he said.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

Grover Dawson's apartment was just a few blocks away from the Tropic Sands, where Mark had lived with his first wife and their infant son forty years ago. The Tropic Sands was a typical example of the space-age modernism that had swept Southern California in the late fifties and early sixties.

The buildings of the era were essentially stucco boxes, bland on three sides but with eye-catching street facades meant to grab a motorist's attention. The Tropic Sands had two palm trees out front and the name of the apartment house written in flowing plywood script over a strip of lava rock and punctuated by a starburst lamp.

The architecture seemed to say that these weren't just places to live—they were a trip to paradise or a rocket to tomorrow. The bright colors and sweeping rooflines were meant to distract tenants from the fact that they were actually living in cheaply made, cramped, assembly-line boxes that wouldn't be standing when the future they promised finally arrived.

The apartments were built around and over the car, the carports literally incorporating the automobile as part of the exterior design. That worked well when cars all looked like rocket ships and ocean liners. The rapid decline and neglect of the buildings came about the same time that cars started looking like the shabby boxes they were parked under.

Only a few years ago, the Tropic Sands and remaining buildings like it had become decaying slum apartments destined for demolition, to be replaced by the block-long condominium monoliths that were reshaping West LA.

But then a miracle happened. Young, successful professionals embraced the exuberant optimism that the buildings represented, restoring the vintage properties to their gaudy grandeur.

Now the Tropic Sands looked even better than it had in Mark's day, so much so that it seemed like a figment of his imagination, a fading memory gussied up by sentiment and wishful thinking.

He wondered if Emily drove by the building on purpose as a way to jog his memory. Then again, perhaps he'd never told her about this place and she was merely taking surface streets to avoid the congestion on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Either way, Mark was glad he'd seen the building. It may not have helped him remember Emily, but it gave him another tether between the past and the present to hold on to, making him feel a little more whole.

Grover Dawson's building wasn't as fortunate as the Tropic Sands. It had been built later and lacked the kitsch appeal. It was just a stucco box, with a brand-new for rent sign taped in the window of Grover's ground-floor apartment.

Mark and Emily walked into the courtyard. The front door of Grover's apartment was open, and there was a woman inside, packing things into moving boxes. She was in her twenties, wearing a sweat-soaked T-shirt and shorts, her long hair pulled back from her face into a ponytail. She had a stud piercing one nostril and another in her left eyebrow. It hurt Mark just to look at them.

"Excuse me," Mark said. "I'm Dr. Mark Sloan."

"I know. We met at Dad's funeral," she said, looking at him quizzically. He was getting used to seeing that expression on people's faces. "I didn't expect to see you again."

Mark didn't feel like telling his story yet again, and he didn't want to give her the impression that her father had met with foul play, at least not until he actually had some evidence. He assumed he'd been just as careful when they met before.

"I used to live two blocks over, back in the early sixties," Mark said. "I was just showing the place to my wife, and I realized you might be here. I thought I'd drop by and see how you were getting along."

Emily stepped forward, offering the woman her hand. "I'm Emily Noble."

"Mallory Dawson," the woman said.

"How are you holding up?" Emily asked.

"I'm running myself ragged. I have to go back to New York in two days, and there just isn't enough time to do all the things I have to do. I'm trying to sort through all of Dad's stuff and get this place cleaned up so I don't get stuck with next month's rent."

"I know how you feel," Emily said. "I had to do the same thing when my father died."

Mallory sat down on one of the moving boxes and took a sip from a soft drink can. "Most of Dad's stuff is going to the church. They'll give it to needy families or sell it at one of their swap meets."

"You're not keeping anything for yourself?" Mark asked. 

"The photo albums, of course, but that's about it. I still haven't found his wedding ring. I've torn the place apart looking for it—not that it matters as much now."

"Why not?" Mark said, wondering if she planned to stick the ring through her nose, too.

"It's a little late to bury him with it like I wanted to. That's why I asked you before the funeral if the medical examiner might have misplaced it when she removed his personal effects."

"Yes, I remember," Mark lied.

"You said you'd look into it for me," Mallory said. "Did you find it?"

"I'm afraid not," Mark said. "Have you heard anything from his girlfriend?"

"Not a peep. If he hadn't died the way he did, I probably never would have known he had one. It's funny, he used to give me such a hard time about my nomadic love life, telling me how wrong it was that I wasn't saving myself for marriage. You'd think I'd resent him now for giving me hell and being such a hypocrite. But the truth is I'm glad he died in someone's arms, that he wasn't alone, and that his last moments were filled with affection and tenderness."

"That's a healthy way of looking at it," Mark said.

She smiled to herself. "I'll tell you a little secret, though. During the funeral, I kept looking at all those tearful church ladies standing at the graveside. I tried to see if I could figure out from their faces which one was his squeeze."

"Do you think you spotted her?" Emily asked.

Mallory shook her head. "Whoever she is, I bet it will be a long time before she has sex again."

The conversation with Grover Dawson's daughter only reinforced Mark's feeling that something wasn't right about the circumstances of the man's death.

"Just because Grover didn't tell his daughter about his girlfriend doesn't mean he didn't have one," Emily said as they drove back to their house in Malibu.

"Now you sound like Steve," Mark said.

"It makes more sense than someone switching Grover's meds with Viagra or forcing him at gunpoint to take the little blue pills."

"You didn't know Grover," Mark said.

"But I know men," she said.

When they got back to the house, Mark and Emily had a late lunch of tuna fish sandwiches and cantaloupe slices.

Mark was clearing the dishes when Emily brought several large photo albums to the table.

"What are those?" he asked.

"I thought you might like to see our wedding album," she said.

"Some other time," Mark said. "I've got work to do."

"You've spent most of the day on your investigation. How about spending a few minutes trying to remember us?"

Mark glanced at the album and saw some pictures of them together on the beach at the Grand Kiahuna Poipu, the resort where he and Steve had stayed once.

"I'll look at all the pictures of us," Mark said, "when Jesse's killer has been caught."

Mark turned before he could see the expression on Emily's face. He knew she was hurt, and that he was being unfair, but he had other priorities that were bigger than himself or his relationship with Emily. His memories could be recovered. Jesse was gone forever. And what about Grover Dawson? How many others had died at the hands of this unknown killer?

His memories could wait. Justice for the dead could not.

He went downstairs to his office. His intention was to go through the files again. And again. And again, until the facts coalesced in his subconscious and he found the common thread.

His gaze fell first on his notes on the dry-erase boards, on the same indiscernible doodling and scribbling he couldn't make sense of the day before.

Now it had changed.

Actually, the notes hadn't changed. He had.

It wasn't a bunch of meaningless scrawls and doodles anymore. He had the facts necessary to put everything into perspective. It was as if he'd put on a pair of glasses and was seeing clearly again.

Looking at the board, he saw now that he'd compared all the other patient deaths to the details of Grover Dawson's demise and discovered something.

A pattern.

It was right there, amidst the lists and circled names and crisscrossing lines and arrows. The intersecting lines formed a web of murder.

He realized now what it was that had bothered him at Dr. Dalton's office. Not only were Leila Pevney and Chadwick Saxelid people who'd cheated death and later died of fatal drug interactions, but they also lived alone.

So did Grover.

So did Sandy Sechrest, the woman who was electrocuted in her bathtub.

And so did two of Mark's dead patients, Joyce Kling and Hammond McNutchin.

There were other patients on the board whose histories were similar to those of Dawson, Sechrest, Pevney, and Chadwick, but with some inconsistencies. It wasn't a perfect pattern. For instance, some cases matched except for the fact that the patients died from natural causes as opposed to accidents or fatal drug interactions.

Were they part of the pattern or not? Or was his pattern flawed?

He was still no closer to identifying the one deadly point of convergence that would determine who were truly victims and lead him to the killer.

Mark looked at his notes, the ones he'd found at his office at Community General.

First Fidelity Casualty

Wedding band

Dentures?

Kemper-Carlson Pharmaceuticals

Cal-Star Insurance

Sechrest
+
Pevney + ?

The glass fish?

The pearl necklace?

He assumed that the appearance of insurance and pharmaceutical companies on the list meant that some of the victims might have shared the same insurer or pharmacist. That would be easy enough to check.

But what about the other items? How did dentures or a glass fish figure into things?

Perhaps the wedding band mentioned in his notes referred to the ring Grover's daughter was talking about, the one that had been lost.

A shiver traveled up Mark's spine as he came to a sudden realization. He knew why the glass fish, the dentures, and the pearl necklace were significant.

They were items that belonged to the dead patients. They were items that were missing.

They were trophies.

That was when Mark felt more than just the shiver of realization. He felt the living, breathing, deadly presence of the killer, the monster creeping in the darkness.

The phone rang, startling him. Emily grabbed it on the second ring. He couldn't hear her words, but he could hear the urgent tone in her voice.

There was an emergency.

Mark went with Emily to the hospital. He talked her into taking him along so he could pick up his car and drive it back to Malibu.

All Emily knew about her unborn patient was that the fetus was suffering from a serious atrial septal defect, an abnormal opening between the two upper chambers of the heart. The baby wasn't due for another few weeks and could die without emergency in-utero surgery.

"Why wasn't the defect caught earlier?" Mark asked Emily as she drove.

"I don't know. The only reason it was spotted now was because the mother was in a car accident," Emily said. "The ER doctors were checking to see if the fetus had been injured and they stumbled on the abnormality."