Diagnosis Murder 6 - The Dead Letter

by Lee Goldberg

  It was always a place meant to be passed by. Long before the advent of highways, Kingman had served as a way station for railroad travelers and, before that, probably for Indians on the move across the dry, brown Hualapai Valley.

  The post-Route 66 architecture in Kingman was roadside basic with a blandness that transcended time, style, or place, buildings made to be forgotten even as you were looking at them.

  They achieved their purpose.

  Mark stopped at the post office where Sanford Pelz kept a box for his mail. The building was a sun-bleached gray that blended perfectly with the sidewalk, the parking lot, and the street to create one seamless block of dullness. The post office might have been built in 1950 or a week ago—it was impossible for Mark to tell, at least from a design standpoint.

  No one except the postman was inside. He sat behind a chipped and yellowed Formica counter on a rickety stool that was strategically placed so it was in the crosscurrent of the office's three whirring fans.

  The postman embodied the same blandness as the building he occupied. It was as if he'd been assembled at the same time out of the leftover building supplies. Maybe thirty or forty years old, he wore his pale pudginess like a soggy coat. The name tag pinned to the breast pocket of his fading postal uniform read: DWAYNE.

  "Can I help you." Dwayne asked with an unbridled lack of enthusiasm.

  "I'm Dr. Mark Sloan, chief of internal medicine at Community General Hospital in Los Angeles." Mark showed Dwayne his hospital identification.

  "Uh-huh," Dwayne said. "Would you like to purchase some stamps today?"

  "I'm here about one of my patients, Sanford Pelz," Mark said. "I understand he keeps a post office box here."

  "Yep."

  "Has he been in lately to pick up his mail?"

  "Not for a few days," Dwayne said. "Hasn't even come in for this month's issue of Bank Note Reporter. It arrived yesterday."

  Mark didn't like the sound of that. Pelz had stopped coming in for his mail around the same time Stryker was killed. The coincidence troubled him.

  "I'm worried about him." That much was true, but what Mark said next certainly wasn't. "He missed an important appointment with me at the hospital and I haven't been able to reach him on the phone."

  Dwayne gave him a blank look. "So you drove all the way up here from LA."

  Obviously. There was a reason this man was working in a post office in Kingman.

  "Mr. Pelz is very sick. He needs immediate medical attention," Mark said. "Do you know where he lives."

  "We aren't supposed to give out that information," Dwayne said. "It's private."

  "I understand," Mark said. "But do you think I would have come all this way if it wasn't an emergency?"

  "Rules are rules," Dwayne said.

  "Which would you rather have on your conscience? The violation of his privacy or his death?"

  Dwayne pondered that for a while. A long while.

  "He lives in a trailer up in the Black Mountains," Dwayne said. "We don't have mail service up there."

  "I'm not from around here," Mark said. "Do you think you could draw me a map?"

  Dwayne sighed, as if drawing that map would be an extraordinarily strenuous undertaking involving hours of complex drafting and years of cartography experience. But after the sigh, he quickly drew a crude map on the back of a vacation-hold card and handed it to Mark.

  "Thanks. I appreciate your help," Mark said, though he didn't think the map would be much help at all, not for someone who was unfamiliar with the area to start with. He would need something with more detail.

  Mark got in his car and drove to a Chevron station he'd passed earlier on his way in from the interstate. He filled up his tank, then went inside the tiny convenience store to ask for a map to Oatman and some directions.

  The gas station attendant was a stout woman with a ponytail face-lift, her hair pulled back so tight that her eyebrows became her bangs. Her name tag read: SHARONA.

  Whoever made name tags in Kingman must be doing brisk business, Mark thought.

  "Excuse me, do you know how to get to Sanford Pelz's place?"

  "Sure," Sharona said. "Who are you?"

  "Dr. Mark Sloan," he said. "Mr. Pelz is my patient. Do you know him?"

  "Everybody does," Sharona said. "He's one of those people who expects the Trilateral Commission and the Secret World Government to take over the United States any day now."

  Mark had thought the conspiracy theories about the Trilateral Commission, a secret body of business leaders who supposedly controlled world affairs, died with mood rings and Afros. Apparently he was wrong.

  "You his shrink?" she asked.

  "No, I'm his physician."

  "Wishful thinking on my part. He lives up in the mountains between Sitgreaves Pass and Goldroad."

  "So I've heard," Mark said. "What's Goldroad?"

  "An old gold mining settlement. It's nothing but rocky ruins now," she said. "Are you planning to go out there?"

  "If I can find my way," Mark said. "I'd appreciate some directions. The map I was given isn't too clear."

  Sharona took out a map from a display behind her, spread it open on the counter, and showed him the way, a wiggly scribble up into the mountains to Oatman, a decaying old mining town that survived as a scrappy tourist trap. She marked the approximate point where he'd find the dirt road that led to Pelz's trailer. The only way to spot the road, she said, was to be on the lookout for the weed-covered footings of the long-since-demolished trading post.

  "You be careful on Bloody 66, Doc," she said.

  "Why's that?" Mark figured it was never a good sign when "bloody" was used to describe a road, but he didn't think it could be any more dangerous than the Pearblossom Highway and he'd survived that.

  "It's fearsome," she said. "The ghosts of many a dead traveler wander in the shadows of those cliffs."

  Sharona explained that the old road was part of Route 66 until 1953, when it was replaced by a new stretch of highway that avoided the mountains and that eventually became Interstate 40. But even in its heyday, the road into Oatman was a error.

  The way she described it, the steady, arduous climb would be hard enough on driver and car alike, but as you neared the dark, brooding peaks, the road tried to trick you with one turn after another, each more deadly than the one before.

  If you were fortunate, your car would simply die struggling up the grade and have to be towed the rest of the way by an experienced local. Many drivers counted their blessings when that happened. It meant they didn't have to drive the Bloody 66 themselves. Others simply hired someone in Kingman to take the wheel of their car from the get-go and guide them safely to Oatman or on to Toprock. The local would then turn around and guide travelers heading east over the pass.

  "My uncle's uncle Cletus will drive you for thirty bucks," she said. "He's made that drive so many times he could do it with one eye shut, which is fortunate, 'cause he's only got one left"

  "He only has one eye?"

  "And only one testicle, but that's another story. Uncle Cletus lost the eye in a bar fight in '88. It got plucked out with a pool cue. Rolled across the floor like a marble, they say. He's got it in this pickle jar full of formaldehyde on his mantel. It's his security system. One time a robber broke in, saw that eye staring at him in the moonlight, and got spooked. He ran out side in such a hurry, he tripped over the porch step and broke his neck."

  Mark was afraid to ask where Uncle Cletus kept his testicle.

  "Well, thank you so much for the directions. I think I'll take my chances on the road myself."

  "Say, Doc," she said, "could I ask you a little favor?" He figured he owed her something for her help and for sharing an anecdote with him that he'd be telling everyone as soon as he got home.

  "Of course' Mark said.

  She motioned another attendant to take her place at the register, slipped out from behind the counter, and led Mark towards the restrooms.

  "It's about my hemorrhoids," s
he whispered. "It's got so I can read an entire Harlequin every time I visit the john, if you get my meaning."

  Unfortunately, he did.

  "Think you could take a look at it?" she asked.

  Before Mark had a chance to answer, she grabbed a box of rubber gloves from a nearby shelf, shoved them in his hands, and opened the bathroom door, inviting him inside.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mark wasn't too thrilled with the sights in Kingman, having viewed a natural wonder he wouldn't recommend to anyone as a tourist attraction.

  After a careful and reluctant examination, he'd urged Sharona to visit a qualified proctologist right away for a hemorrhoidectomy.

  She sighed wearily. "Guess I won't have much opportunity anymore for appreciating literature."

  "There are other places you can read."

  "Not with a husband and six kids," she said.

  Mark left the gas station as fast as he could without looking as if he was running. He didn't want to be asked for any more favors.

  He set out immediately for the Pelz place so that he'd get there before dark. After his talk with Pelz, he'd find a place to stay in Victorville and return home in the morning.

  The narrow, crumbling road that crept up into the Black Mountains turned out to be every bit as treacherous as Sharona had made it seem. It twisted along the jagged hillside, with unexpected hairpin turns around blind corners over sheer cliffs. There were no guard rails, and the blinding glare of the sun in his face didn't help.

  Mark was sweating, his back stiff and tense with concentration and anxiety. He found himself wishing he'd taken Uncle Cletus on as a driver after all.

  Every so often, as he slowly negotiated a harrowing switchback, he would see the rusted and charred wreckage of cars and trucks at the bottom of the ravine. The wrecks lay there, hundreds of feet below the road, tangled in the mountainous brush like the bleached bones of long-dead animals or embedded amidst the boulders like exposed fossils.

  It made his throat go dry.

  Mark was so intent on his driving that he almost missed the trading post ruins that marked the top of the unpaved road down to where Pelz lived. The footings were made of native stone, and he easily could have mistaken them for a natural outcropping if he hadn't known what to look for.

  He took the turn and bounced along the rutted, rock-strewn road until he finally emerged into a clearing surrounded by saguaro cactus.

  Pelz's compound was a ragged collection of weather beaten, rusted-out mobile homes joined together by corrugated metal breezeways and shacks, apparently built from materials salvaged from the ruins of other buildings. The hulks of several old Cadillacs were lined up behind a giant satellite dish like silent sentries, their hoods raised in salute, their engines long since gutted for parts. A five-year-old Cadillac, a Frankenstein of Caddy parts covered in dirt and dents and someday destined to join its organ donors, was parked in front of one of the mobile homes.

  Mark parked beside the Caddystein and got out, relieved to finally be off the treacherous road. It was hard for him to believe it could ever have been part of Route 66, much less the principal highway into California. He dreaded the rest of the drive back to the interstate beyond Oatman.

  He took a deep breath of fresh Arizona desert air and immediately wished he hadn't. His stomach recoiled, and he coughed the breath right back out of his lungs, nearly bringing his lunch up with it.

  The air was heavy with the sickening scent of decaying flesh. It was the scent of death.

  Mark turned apprehensively towards the mobile home, knowing what he would find inside. Holding a handkerchief to his nose, he walked up to the screen door without bothering to knock or announce his presence.

  The door opened with a mournful, agonized creak, as if he was causing the old mobile home pain, stretching muscles and tendons instead of rusted hinges. He stepped inside, startling a thousand flies and sending them buzzing all around him.

  Mark swatted them away and examined his cramped surroundings. There were currency reference books and pricing guides going back years lined up on the kitchen counter. There were stacks of yellowed currency auction catalogs and back issues of the Bank Note Reporter along the walls and on the dinette table. He guessed that this mobile home served as Pelz's office and that one of the others must be his living quarters.

  As he neared what had once served as the master bedroom he saw a man, facedown on the floor, his body grotesquely bloated from decomposition, a bullet hole in the back of his head.

  Mark crouched beside the body and turned the man's head so he could see his face. It wasn't Stryker. The man was in his late fifties, his nose was bulbous, red, and looked like a cauliflower. The dead man had suffered from rhinophyma, a disfiguring skin ailment exacerbated by alcohol consumption.

  Using his handkerchief, he reached gingerly into the dead man's back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and glanced at the Arizona driver's license.

  The dead man was Pelz. And judging by the degree of decomposition, Mark figured he was killed around the same time that Stryker disappeared. He sorted through the rest of the wallet's contents: a hundred dollars in crumpled bills, several phone cards, and a single credit card.

  Mark jotted down the account numbers of all the cards on a piece of paper and slipped the wallet back in Pelz's pocket. And then he stood there, trying to decide what to do next.

  The murder of Sanford Pelz, perhaps on the same day that Stryker was killed, raised all kinds of troubling questions, none of which Mark was prepared to deal with at the moment.

  He thought about searching the office, but what would he be looking for?

  A phone would be a start.

  After a few minutes of looking around, though, he concluded that Pelz didn't have a phone, at least not in his office. So he took out his cell phone and tried to call 911, but he couldn't get a signal.

  Now Mark understood why Pelz had so many phone cards in his wallet; he used them when he went to town to make his calls.

  Mark would have to drive to Oatman and notify the authorities there. That was fine with him. He couldn't wait to leave.

  He took one more quick glance around the place to make sure he wasn't missing any vital clues, then hurried out—not that time was of the essence. Pelz wouldn't be getting any less dead.

  The urgency Mark felt was the need to escape, to get as far away from the violence and the rot as he could. He'd seen a lot of corpses in his life, so that wasn't what disturbed him. It was. this place, the desolation of it, and the omnipresent sense of doom around each hairpin turn.

  Mark got into his car and drove away, careful not to give in to the urge to speed. Hurrying along this road could be fatal.

  He returned to the main road and headed west, into the setting sun, which made the dangerous drive even more harrowing. His sunglasses weren't much help against the glare, and he was afraid to lower his visor for fear of critically limiting his view.

  The road became even narrower and curvier than it had been before. As he was making yet another unexpectedly sharp turn, a flash of light stabbed him in the eyes. He slammed his foot on the brake pedal in surprise and nearly lost control of the car, which came to a screeching, rubber-peeling stop at the edge of the cliff.

  Breathing hard, his heart pounding, Mark looked back to see what had caused the reflection that nearly killed him.

  At the edge of the curve, at the perfect angle to catch the light of the setting sun, was what appeared to be a bright silver propeller about the size of a large pizza. It took Mark a minute to figure out that it was a spinner ripped from the rim of someone's tires. The driver had probably shaved the exposed, craggy face of the rocky mountainside while negotiating the tight turn.

  That had to hurt. Steve had looked into getting a set of rims with spinners for his truck, and Mark knew they could cost thousands of dollars. Whoever lost the spinner must have been pretty upset when he reached the interstate—but not enough to brave a return trip up Bloody 66 to retrieve it.


  Mark got out of the car, surprised that his legs were shaking, and went over to get the spinner. He didn't want anyone else to be blinded by it. As he leaned over to pick it up, he saw dozens of skid marks on the asphalt. One of them was surely his own.

  At the same moment, he remembered something Serena Cale had said to him in Capitola.

  "Nick showed me his ride. A tricked-out Escalade with chrome spinners on the rims."

  Stryker's last call was to Pelz. His last purchase was in Victorville. And he'd been missing about as long as Pelz appeared to have been dead.

  With growing trepidation, Mark followed a set of skid marks to the edge of the cliff and peered over the side into the ravine below.

  There was a trail of freshly scraped dirt, flattened scrub, amputated cacti, and dislodged rocks that stretched for fifty yards. And at the bottom of that trail was an Escalade SUV, crumpled like a discarded soda can amidst the boulders.

  Mark ran back to his car, tossed the spinner inside, and grabbed his medical bag. As an afterthought, he also brought his portable earthquake kit, a large backpack that contained first-aid supplies, nonperishable food, bottled water, running shoes, flashlights, batteries, a folded tarp, duct tape, rope, and an assortment of other survival essentials. Like many Los Angelenos, he had earthquake kits at home, in his car, and at his office.

  It took him a few minutes to find a place where he could reasonably attempt to get down the ravine without killing himself, and then he spent nearly an hour carefully working his way down, losing the daylight. He flicked on a flashlight and continued on, slipping several times in the darkness and sliding into the thorny brush, but he made it safely to the bottom with only a few scratches.

  He swept the beam of his flashlight over the wreckage. The Escalade had been nearly flattened by its end over end tumble down the cliff. As he got closer, he could see the SUV was resting at an angle against several boulders, creating a cave underneath it.

  Mark aimed his light into the space under the SUV and saw the body of a man, his clothes torn and blood-splattered. He took off his backpack and crawled inside.