by Lee Goldberg
It would have been helpful, Steve thought, if his father had included a key to the symbols. What does a circled name mean? How is it different from an underlined name? What do the arrows mean? And what about the lists of names without any heading? What are they lists of?
Steve set Mark's report and notes on the table, then went to the garage and brought in the dry-erase board and easel. He liked to see things in black and white, organized and clear. The way Steve solved cases was through dogged investigation, which often meant hours of research, sorting through facts and figures, interviews and autopsy reports, crime scene photos and physical evidence. The cliche goes that the devil is in the details. He often found that murderers were in the details, too.
He referred to his notebook and the To Do list he had begun writing in the hospital waiting room.
Sort patients by age.
Sort patients by sex.
Sort patients by race.
Sort patients by cause of death.
Sort patients by doctors, hospitals, and caregivers shared in common.
Sort patients by geographic location.
It looked like his father had already started doing the same thing. But there were other notations, about glass fish and dentures, that made no sense to Steve. Perhaps they would become clear once Steve began his own lists.
With at least forty-eight names to go through, and possibly as many as eight hundred, he was going to need a lot more dry-erase boards. And some extra manpower.
As if on cue, there was a knock at the door. He opened it to find Amanda and Jesse standing outside. She was holding a pizza and carrying a grocery bag full of soda and cookies. Jesse was wearing a Velcro splint on his knee and leaning on a cane, a laptop computer bag over his shoulder.
"The surgery was a success. We've relieved the pressure," Jesse said. "Mark is still unconscious, but he's out of danger. Susan is keeping a close eye on him anyway."
"That's a relief," Steve said. "But you didn't have to come all the way down here to tell me. You need to get some sleep."
Jesse waved off his concern. "I napped while Dr. Kozak examined me and x-rayed my knee."
"Is it broken?"
"Just a bad bruise," Jesse said.
"Don't you have work to do?" Amanda asked Steve impatiently.
"More than I can handle," he replied with a sigh.
"So what are we doing standing out here letting the pizza get cold? Let's get started," Amanda said as she stepped past him and into the house, Jesse hobbling in after her.
Steve closed the door and smiled to himself.
Four hours later, night had fallen, the pizza was finished, Jesse was asleep on the couch, and the dry-erase board was covered with Amanda's neat handwriting. Two laptops were open on the kitchen table, which was strewn with files, papers, and pizza crusts.
Steve and Amanda sat across from each other, inputting data into their laptops and sorting through files. It was tedious work, and the fatigue showed in their sagging posture and weary expressions. As hard as they were working, Steve didn't feel as if they'd accomplished anything. He wasn't alone.
Amanda groaned, leaned back in her chair, and sighed. "Do you have any idea how many different doctors, nurses, and technicians a patient sees? And not all of them are mentioned in patient records. To do this right, we'd have to see who was working on the floor every time the patient went in to see the doctor. But we don't even know which of these patents are victims and which aren't."
Steve got up and stretched. "In other words, we're getting nowhere slowly."
"What we need is more facts, something that will help us narrow our focus, or we'll be doing this for months."
"Maybe Dad will wake up tonight and just tell us who the killer is," Steve said.
"I doubt it."
"He's surprised us before."
"It's possible that Mark found some organizing principle to wrestle all this data down to size, but I doubt he was much further along than we are, or you would have heard about it."
Steve searched through the papers on the table and finally found the yellow legal pad he was looking for. "But what about his notes? The glass fish and the dentures? What was he talking about?"
"I don't know," she said.
"He had something," Steve said.
"How do you know?"
"Jesse told me that he had The Look."
"It doesn't take much to give him The Look," Amanda said. "You and I would have to see the killer over the body or find a written confession to get The Look in our eyes." Steve's cell phone rang, playing a ring-tone version of the Dragnet theme.
"That means it's the office," Steve said, flipping open the phone.
"Cute," Amanda said.
"Sloan here," he answered. It was another detective, informing him that the Camaro had been found. He listened to the details, then thanked the detective for the call and hung up.
Steve smiled at Amanda. "We've had a break. The car was found abandoned in Van Nuys."
"Why's that a break?" Amanda asked. "Odds are that whoever was driving it wiped it down pretty good."
"Even if we don't retrieve any forensic evidence, we can still get a lot from the car. We know it was stolen in Canoga Park yesterday, used in West Los Angeles this morning, and abandoned in Van Nuys. Why steal it in Canoga Park and not, say, Wilmington or Long Beach? Why drop it back in the San Fernando Valley again? Why not in Commerce or Redlands? Or anywhere else?"
"You think the driver lives or works in the Valley."
Steve nodded. "I'm going to make some other guesses, too. The driver was in a hurry to get the hell away from Community General. I'll bet he took the freeway into Van Nuys."
"So?"
"We have traffic cameras," Steve said. "I'll pull the footage from this morning. Maybe we'll get lucky and see what exit he took."
"What good will that do you? You already have video of the car, and the windows were too tinted to see anything."
"It's not the Camaro I'm interested in," Steve said. "I'm looking for the car that was following him."
"You think he had an accomplice?"
"I don't think he left his own car parked where he dumped the stolen Camaro," Steve said. "He wouldn't take the chance that someone might notice him or the car."
"Was the Camaro dumped near Van Nuys Boulevard or Ventura Boulevard?"
"Yeah, on Kester, a few blocks south of Ventura and a couple blocks west of Van Nuys Boulevard."
"Maybe he parked the car and then walked to a bus stop or called a taxi," Amanda said.
"Too risky. If he's careful, he'll figure we'll check the bus lines and taxi services, which I'm gonna do anyway, of course," Steve said. "Plus there are cameras in most buses and in taxis, and we know this guy isn't eager to have his picture taken."
"So besides looking at traffic footage, what's your next move?"
"I'm going to find all the hospitals in the Canoga Park and Van Nuys area and get personnel lists from them going back a year. We can cross-reference the hospitals and their employees with the patients in your report and see what hits we get."
"Oh, good, more information to crunch."
"We have a name for that in my business," Steve said. "What's that?" Amanda asked.
"We call it detective work."
CHAPTER TWELVE
The two of them kept working on the files until nearly ten o'clock, when Amanda finally gave up. She had to get home and relieve her babysitter, who had early classes the next morning. Amanda offered to drop Jesse off at his place on her way, but Steve said he'd do it instead. He roused Jesse from his deep slumber, helped him limp half asleep to the car, and drove him to his apartment. Once they got there, Steve practically had to carry Jesse up the stairs to his front door.
Instead of heading straight back to Malibu, Steve decided to stop by the hospital to check on his father and let Susan know that Jesse was finally in bed. He was halfway to Community General when his cell rang. The ring tone was Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff," whi
ch meant it was Steve's girlfriend, Lissy, calling.
Steve hesitated for a moment, ashamed of himself. He'd just realized that he hadn't talked to her since he'd hurried out of her apartment that morning. He tried to think of a way to wriggle out of the misery to come, but avoiding her now would only make things worse. He flipped open the phone.
"Hey, Lissy. I was just thinking about you."
"How's Mark?" she asked, her voice flat and unemotional.
"He's got a concussion. He's been unconscious since this morning, but the doctors tell me not to worry, so I'm not."
"I'm glad to hear that," she said. "Finally."
The last word stung like a slap. And he knew it was meant to. He wasn't going to defend himself. He would admit his mistake and hope they could move past it.
"I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to call you. I've been busy chasing the sonofabitch who tried to run my father down."
"I thought we were building a relationship together."
He groaned softly and hoped she couldn't hear it. They'd been dating for months, and the R-word had never come up once. He was a firm believer that the strongest relationships were the unspoken ones. Once you had to talk about a relationship, it was over. If he could put this conversation off, maybe what they had could still be saved.
"Look, Lissy, this really isn't a good time."
"I know. It's a terrible time. That's when you need the people you care about most. But you don't need me. You didn't even think to call."
"I told you, I was tied up. It's got nothing to do with you." He wished he could take the words back the moment they'd escaped his lips. How many stupid, hurtful things could a man say in one day?
"That's the problem, Steve. You shut me out. You didn't even think of me. You were in my bed, in my arms, when the hospital called about Mark. You wouldn't let me go to the hospital with you, and I didn't hear from you all day. It never once occurred to you that I'd be worried about you and your father."
"I was going to call," he said, sounding insincere and whiny even to himself.
"I would have wanted you with me if my father was hurt," she said. "And if you couldn't be there, I would have called you a dozen times."
Steve let out a deep breath. He didn't know what to do besides plead guilty—not that it would help. He knew what was coming next. It would be the speech about how he always shut her out, he never told her what he was feeling, and he was insensitive to her emotional needs. He'd heard it a hundred times. Not from her, but from every other woman he'd ever dated.
Why were women so damn needy?
"I'm sorry," he said and braced himself for the speech. But much to his surprise, it didn't come.
"Good-bye, Steve," she said and hung up.
Steve almost wished he'd gotten the speech instead. There was a finality to the way she said "Good-bye" that left no doubt in his mind that he'd been dumped.
He pocketed the phone, and as he did so his fingers brushed the edge of Dr. Hudson's business card. It looked like he might be calling her sooner than he had thought.
Steve parked in the spot reserved for police and sheriff's department vehicles in front of the Community General ER entrance and went inside.
It was a slow night in the ER, and the place was unusually quiet. Doctors and nurses were filling out paperwork, and some orderlies were watching an episode of CSI. Steve was a familiar face there, so nobody seemed to notice or care as he walked past the admittance desk.
Steve went up to the ICU, where there was a treatment area made up of several beds, separated from one another by curtains on tracks along the ceiling. Mark was in one of those beds, but the curtain was open enough for Steve to see as he approached that his father was still unconscious and that Susan was changing the bandage around the tube draining the fluid from Mark's brain.
The thought of the hole in Mark's skull made Steve shiver, not with revulsion but with fear. It was the first time Steve had ever seen his father appear so weak and fragile, and it frightened him. For a moment, Steve felt as if he was a child again.
"How's he doing?" Steve whispered to Susan as he stepped up beside her.
"He's stable and doing fine. You don't need to whisper. He's not asleep. Besides, we want him to wake up, remember?'
Steve nodded. "Jesse is home in bed, finally getting some sleep. Is it okay if I sit here for a while?"
"You can stay as long as you like," she said. "Would you like me to bring you some coffee or something?"
"No, thanks," Steve said.
"Buzz me if you need anything." She motioned to the buzzer on the bed and left, dragging the curtain shut behind her.
Steve took a seat beside his father's bed. The chair was uncomfortable and the light was too harsh. The air smelled of rubbing alcohol. He wanted to be anywhere but here.
He looked at all the tubes going in and out of Mark's body and watched the saline drip into the IV line.
He listened to the steady beep of the heart monitor and the hum of the other machinery.
He heard a woman sobbing on the other side of the curtain and a man telling her it was going to be all right. Steve wondered which one of them was the patient and who needed the comfort more.
He wished his father could tell him that everything was going to be all right. Because Steve wouldn't believe it if he heard it from anyone else.
Steve was back at his desk in the West Los Angeles station at 8:00 a.m. sharp. He'd found four hospitals near Canoga Park and Van Nuys—John Muir Hospital, Reseda Medical Center, Woodland Hospital, and West Valley Presbyterian—and a dozen retirement homes. There were probably hundreds of individual medical practices and clinics in the area, too, but contacting them all wasn't practical—at least not yet.
He started calling the hospitals and rest homes, requesting lists of all their employees going back two years. By ten thirty he'd finished with the hospitals and was working his way through his list of retirement homes when Lieutenant Tanis Archer showed up and dropped a DVD on his cluttered desk.
The DVD was labeled "405/134 Traffic Cam Footage" with the previous day's date written below. The "405" was the San Diego Freeway; the "134" was the Ventura Freeway.
Steve hurriedly finished his call and regarded Tanis. "Are you working in parking and traffic enforcement now?"
It wouldn't have surprised him if she was.
She'd worked her way up the department ladder by getting the job done, whatever the cost. She fell down the ladder the same way. Her fatal mistake was apprehending the woman-beating son of a prominent politician and, when he resisted arrest, giving him a taste of what it was like for his victims. When Tanis was told not to press the case, she refused. Firing her would only have made the scandal worse, so she was transferred from one miserable job to another, the powers-that-be hoping she'd finally quit.
They should have known better. "Quit" was a word that wasn't in Tanis Archer's vocabulary.
The last Steve had heard, Tanis was in the basement at Parker Center working cold cases. There, with his father, she'd helped solve the Silent Partner killings. Even so, that wasn't enough to redeem her in the corridors of power.
"I'm on the Anti-Terrorism Strike Force," she said. "I'm the liaison with other law enforcement agencies."
"Sounds exciting," Steve said.
"It's so thrilling that I'd consider a transfer to traffic a step up."
"Oh," Steve said.
"I'm sitting at a desk, Steve. I relay requests from one agency to another. I made an Eiffel Tower out of paper clips the other day."
"So how did you come by this?" Steve asked, picking up the DVD.
"You'd be surprised how many cameras there are in LA now. It's recordings from cameras like the ones on the 405 that made it possible for Scotland Yard to nail the subway bombers within days of the attacks. Among my exciting duties is logging the recordings, which are stored digitally for six months. I snagged your request and expanded on it a bit." She reached into her leather jacket and tossed him another DV
D. "This is footage from our Ventura Boulevard and Van Nuys Boulevard cameras."
He nodded, impressed. "So you're Big Brother."
"In the flesh," she said.
"I always imagined Big Brother being a lot less attractive."
She stared at him, unblinking, her eyes cold and merciless.
"What?" he said.
"Did you just get dumped?"
Now it was his turn to stare at her. "Why do you say that?"
"Because that's the only time you think that flirting with me is worth risking a broken jaw."
"I seem to recall that we dated once."
"I thought we both agreed to forget that ever happened," she said.
"We were perfect for each other. You never accused me of being insensitive to your needs or got upset that I wasn't sharing my feelings."
"I can take care of my own needs," she said. "And why the hell would I want to know your feelings?"
Truer words were never spoken, Steve thought. Not once when they were dating did she ever use the R-word. He was insane not to have stayed with her. So why hadn't he? He couldn't remember.
"Why did we ever break up?"
"We didn't."
"Of course we did," he said.
"We were never together. We did what we did and life went on. Neither one of us was needy enough to need each other."
"Which is why we are both alone."
"Speak for yourself," she said. "I've got somebody."
"You do?"
"Don't sound so damn surprised, like it's some kind of miracle."
"Who is he?"
"His name is Buck," she said. "He's a bounty hunter."
"What's he got that I don't?"
"A twelve-gauge shotgun he calls Betsy, for starters, and a red Mercury Montego."
"These are pluses?"
"He doesn't play by the rules. You're a Boy Scout and a daddy's boy."
"No, I'm not."
"You still live at home," Tanis said.
"I live on the beach in Malibu. Tell me you wouldn't want to live there."
"Not if my dad was in the same house."
"What about your mom?" Steve asked.
