The Last Word (20 page)

Tyrell took the seat that Ort had vacated. “On the contrary, Dr. Bentley. You have a sizable trust fund and, if the government is to be believed, millions in an offshore account. I should also inform you that in the short time you’ve been in custody you have become, if not a celebrity, certainly widely known and notorious. As far as guilty goes, who really cares?”

Tyrell proceeded to lay out the ground rules that Mark had agreed to on her behalf, got her promise to follow them, and told her what he saw as the weaknesses in the government’s case.

There was only one.

“Reasonable doubt,” he said.

“That’s it?”

“The evidence against you appears to be voluminous, detailed, and convincing,” Tyrell said.

“It’s all fake,” Amanda said. “The morticians are lying to save themselves, my signatures were forged, and money was transferred to an account I never opened.”

“Then that is what I will make the jury believe,” Tyrell said. “Or at least accept as being possible.”

She told him about Ort’s interrogation, and what she’d learned from it, and what she’d said. Tyrell made some notes and kept shaking his head disapprovingly as she spoke.

“You shouldn’t have said anything,” Tyrell said. “You didn’t help yourself.”

“I didn’t hurt myself either.”

“Don’t say another word to anyone but me,” Tyrell said. “Remember, every word you say damages your case. The less they know, the better. From now on, I will do all the talking. Is that clear?”

Amanda nodded. “I think I know why I was framed.”

“You were a convenient scapegoat for their crimes,” Tyrell said.

“That’s only part of it,” she said. “It’s much bigger than that.”

Tyrell glanced at his watch and got up. “We’ll have plenty of time to discuss it all. But first, I’d like to get you, Dr. Travis, and his wife out of here, and I still have to meet with them. Your arraignment is at eight a.m. tomorrow.”

“I’ll try to make it,” she said.

Mark spent the night slogging through the Community General employee shift schedules covering the days when the West Nile virus patient and the two donors were being treated.

There was nothing else for him to do. Steve was investigating the funeral homes that were supposedly conspiring with Amanda to sell body parts. Arthur Tyrell was busy advising his new clients and preparing to argue for their release on bail in front of the federal magistrate in the morning. That left Mark all by himself in the beach house, hunched over his laptop and tanked on coffee, toiling to find whoever had infected the organ donors with the virus.

The name of the killer was on the screen in front of him—he knew that. He just didn’t know which name it was. But he would find out. Mark wouldn’t stop until the real killer was behind bars and Jesse and Susan were cleared.

His own words kept ringing in his ears as he worked, and he didn’t know why. Was it his fear of personal ruination bubbling to the surface? He couldn’t let Burnside’s speech get to him or allow his own selfish anxieties to distract him now. He needed to devote all his energy and attention to proving his friends innocent.

They deserved nothing less than that.

For years they had risked their careers and even their lives helping him solve homicides. They didn’t have to do it. Chasing murderers wasn’t part of their jobs, at least not until Amanda became a medical examiner, which she did at his friendly urging. Did she really want it? Or did she do it to please him?

Amanda and Jesse assisted in his unofficial investigations out of loyalty and respect. Susan did it out of love and devotion to her husband. But he knew he could always depend on them to put his investigations before everything else in their lives.

How often had he taken advantage of that? What had he ever done for them besides use them as his field investigators and players in his cons?

Now he was going to pay them back for everything they had done for him. For once, he wouldn’t think about himself. He was going to be as devoted to them as they were to him. His own fate didn’t matter.

Okay, so what if it was? Even if he wasn’t doing anything to defend himself, it wasn’t as if helping his friends was an entirely selfless act. Their fate was his own. If they went down, he was sure to follow. So the harder he worked for them now, the more he did for himself.

But that rationale didn’t silence the voice in his head.

Mark pressed on despite the nagging echo from his conversation with Tyrell. He would confront his fears or his guilt or whatever the hell was bothering him later. The phrase became the elevator music in his head as he worked.

He printed out the work schedules and the lists of employees on them. He copied the information by hand to the three dry-erase boards, one for the initial virus patient and one for each organ donor, that he’d set up on easels in the living room.

By dawn, out of all the names that intersected across the three boards, a dozen stood out to Mark as the likeliest suspects. It had more to do with gut instinct than tangible clues, but he was willing to take the gamble that he was right.

The twelve people he selected were nurses, doctors, orderlies, and technicians who wouldn’t create any suspicion if they were seen at the bedsides of any of the three patients. But either by chance or by premeditation, there were some last-minute changes in their usual schedules that put them in the hospital when there was little likelihood that they would be seen with the three patients.

Mark needed more information to narrow the field of suspects even further. He would check their personnel files to learn more about them and then talk with their supervisors to find out why their schedules had been rearranged.

He was attempting to pull up the personnel files when he abruptly lost his connection. He tried to log back on, but when he typed his user name and password, he was sent to an error page that read:

 

Mark tried again and got the same message. Either his forays through the Community General database had been discovered or Janet Dorcott was simply taking preemptive measures. Either way, his task had just gotten a lot more complicated.

He glanced at his watch. It was 6:20. He doubted that either Janet or her minions were in the hospital yet. Whoever had locked him out of the system probably got an angry call from Janet this morning and booted him off from home. It left him no choice but to go to the hospital to look at the hard copies of the personnel files.

But to play it safe, he wouldn’t walk in through the main lobby, the ER, or the employees’ entrance.

He had a key to the loading dock. From there, it was only a short walk to the personnel department file room.

Mark had a key to that door, too. He had a key to every door in the hospital—a fact that, if he hadn’t been the one investigating the crimes, would have made him a pretty good suspect for the killings.

The personnel files weren’t giving Mark much hope until he opened the one for Mercy Reynolds, the utilization nurse. She was in the hospital at all the right times and could wander freely into every department. But that was true of the other eleven suspects, too. What made Mercy especially interesting was the name of her previous employer.

She’d worked for MediSolutions International, the organ-procurement company that distributed the tainted organs from Wethersby and Adams and many of the body parts that Amanda was accused of illegally harvesting from corpses.

Of course, it could just be a coincidence.

MediSolutions had been distributing body parts harvested from donors at Community General for a decade. There was nothing unusual about the company’s handling of the organs in both cases. It was one of two companies that distributed organs, body parts, and tissues from almost every hospital, morgue, and mortuary in Southern California.

But where crime was concerned, Mark believed that one coincidence was suspicious and two were evidence of a plan set in motion.

All of which led to one irrefutable truth for Mark.

Mercy Reynolds was the killer.

She was the one who had injected West Nile virus into Bruce Wethersby and Corinne Adams as they lay brain-dead in the ICU.

She was the one who had framed Jesse and Susan.

Mark didn’t have any evidence, but he knew he was right. He could feel it, as if she were standing right behind him, breathing on his neck.

He copied all of Mercy’s personal information from the file, put it back where he’d found it, and left the room, his heart racing. As soon as he stepped into the corridor, he saw Janet Dorcott marching his way, flanked by two security guards.

“I knew after we shut you out of the computer system that we’d find you either here or in the patient records room,” she said. “You can’t resist violating the rules, can you?”

“Amanda, Jesse, and Susan are innocent,” Mark said. “The sooner I can prove it, the better it will be for them and this hospital.”

“You astonish me, Dr. Sloan. I can’t decide if you’re playing dumb or if your arrogance and sense of entitlement have blinded you to reality.”

“The reality is that there’s a killer still stalking the halls of Community General,” Mark said. “And until she’s caught, patients are in grave danger.”

“
You
are the danger, Dr. Sloan. Everywhere you go, people die. That’s not good for a hospital. That’s not good for anyone,” she said. “You’re fired. Get out and don’t come back.”

The voice in his head this time wasn’t his. It was Mercy, whispering in his ear. He actually turned to look for her. No one was there, of course, and it left Mark feeling naked. He shivered.

“You have no grounds to fire me,” he said.

“There are so many to choose from,” she said. “Let’s start with gross incompetence, violation of patient privacy, and criminal malfeasance. Two doctors and one nurse under your direct supervision are in jail for crimes committed at this hospital. We are cooperating with local, state, and federal authorities investigating your supervision of the adjunct county medical examiner’s office and your use of hospital resources for personal purposes.”

“The board will never stand for this,” Mark said.

“It was a unanimous vote, and the severance offer is rescinded,” Janet said. “You get nothing. We’re finished with you.”

“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Mark said. “Neither have Amanda, Jesse, and Susan.”

He felt he had to say it, even though it didn’t matter and wouldn’t change anything.

His forty-year career at Community General was over.

Although he’d been ready for a change for some time, he didn’t want to be forced out under a cloud of scandal. He wanted to leave on his own terms, with his reputation and legacy intact, his family and friends happy and safe.

Apparently it wasn’t going to happen that way.

“You will find your personal belongings in boxes on the loading dock. Pick them up by five o’clock today or they’ll go in the Dumpster.” Janet motioned to the guards. “Show Dr. Sloan out. If he ever enters this hospital again, even if it’s on a gurney with his brains spilling from the back of his head, drag him out of here.”

Mark turned and walked out, the guards following behind him. And as he went, the voice whispered to him again. Only now it wasn’t Mercy’s voice, and it wasn’t his own. But it was familiar nonetheless. He didn’t so much hear the words this time. He felt them.

Mark couldn’t fit all the boxes in his car, so he found the few personal items that were important to him, consolidated them into one box, and stuck it in his car with his framed degrees and commendations. The rest could be trashed, along with what was left of his career and his reputation.

It seemed that the unrelenting loop in his head was right. His moment had come. But even more troubling than that was what he’d learned.

Mercy Reynolds was the killer.

And the murders she’d committed and the organ-theft scandal were somehow linked. But how?

Only Mercy Reynolds knew.

He looked back at the hospital, wondering if she was in there, looking out at him through one of the windows, laughing to herself.

She’d beaten them all. Amanda, Jesse, and Susan were in jail. Mark’s career was in ruins.

Why did she do it? Was it self-preservation, her way of covering her crimes, or was it something more?

Mark took out his cell phone and called Steve, who answered on the first ring.

“Where are you?” Mark asked.

“Back at the house, looking at your boards,” Steve said. “You’ve been busy.”

“You need to find Mercy Reynolds, a utilization nurse at Community General. She’s the killer.” All Mark heard in reply was the hiss of static. “Steve? Are you there?”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “You found the killer in one night?”

“I actually saw her with Corinne Adams once,” Mark said. “For all I know, Mercy had just finished injecting her with the virus.”

“What proof do you have?”

“None at all,” Mark said.

“Did you sleep last night?”

“Did you?” Mark asked.

“I’m just saying you may be exhausted and it may be affecting your judgment.”

“Find her, Steve,” Mark said and gave him her home address from her personnel records.

“Okay, I will,” Steve said. “Don’t you want to know what I’ve found out?”