by Lee Goldberg
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.
This could be that moment.
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.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
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.
It’s me, Mark. I did it. Catch me if you can.
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.”
This could be that moment.
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.
The moment has come.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
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?”
“Of course,” Mark said, pacing beside his car.
“There’s an organized-crime connection to the two funeral homes in this body-parts ring,” Steve said. “They were both owned by Gordon Ganza. The funeral homes were investm
ents made on Ganza’s behalf by Malcolm Trainor.”
Mark stopped in his tracks, stunned by the news.
Ganza was a major figure in organized crime in Southern California who was killed a few years back. Mark knew that only too well, since he’d been the one framed for the killing by Malcolm Trainor, Ganza’s accountant. Trainor engineered the frame from prison, where he had been serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife, a crime that Mark had solved.
“After Ganza’s murder, his sons sold off everything but the funeral homes,” Steve continued. “I guess they knew better than anyone that death is a booming business.”
Could Trainor be responsible for what was happening to Amanda, Jesse, and Susan? Mark wondered. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time Trainor had managed to pull off a complex criminal conspiracy from within his cell at Sunrise Valley.
This could be that moment.
There was a reason why those words had haunted him all night.
It was his subconscious screaming the answer to the puzzle to him, over and over and over again.
And yet he still didn’t hear it.
Now he did.
He knew why Mercy Reynolds tainted the organs with West Nile virus.
He knew why the funeral homes claimed Amanda was supplying them with body parts.
The only thing he didn’t know was how it was all done.
But he knew why.
When Mark spoke, he tried to keep his voice even and calm. If he told Steve what he was thinking, his son would think he was crazy. He had no proof at all to back up his conclusions.
Not yet, anyway.
There was still one common element of the two cases left to explore.
“Steve, what do you know about MediSolutions International?”
“I was just getting to that,” Steve said. “They’re based in Phoenix. The guy who runs it is Noah Dent. Wasn’t he once the chief administrator at Community General?”
One coincidence is suspicious. Two coincidences are a plan. Three are a conspiracy.
In his short time at Community General, Noah Dent had closed the adjunct county medical examiner’s office, laid off half the nurses, and tried to fire Mark.
But then, without explanation, Dent abruptly reversed all his actions, quit his job, and disappeared. Mark never looked into Dent’s sudden change of heart and mysterious resignation, though he suspected that Jesse had motivated it in some way. Dent left, and that was all that mattered to Mark. Good riddance.
Now Dent had reemerged at MediSolutions and at the center of the two scandals that plagued Community General, leading to the morgue’s being shut down and Mark’s getting fired. Had Dent somehow achieved what he’d set out to do at Community General after all?
Whatever the explanation, it was clear that Mark’s lack of interest in pursuing the mystery was coming back to haunt him.
Like everything else.
“Find Mercy Reynolds,” Mark said.
“I told you that I would,” Steve said.
“Find her fast, Steve. She’s the key to it all. The body-parts ring. The murders. Everything.”
“The two cases are connected?”
“If we can get Mercy to talk, we can clear Amanda, Jesse, and Susan.”
“Where are you going to be?”
“Pursuing another angle,” Mark said. He hung up before his son could press him any further.
CHAPTER FORTY
Steve hurried out of the beach house and was surprised to see Chief Masters’s Lincoln Town Car parked out front, at the edge of the private road that ran parallel to the Pacific Coast Highway. The tinted rear window slid down as Steve approached. Masters sat in the backseat, scowling.
“Get in,” the chief said.
“I’m in a hurry.” Steve stood outside the door and didn’t make a move to open it. “Can we make this quick, sir?”
“Have you made any progress on your assignment?”
“Everything is in place, but we haven’t learned anything yet,” Steve said. “We’ll let you know when something comes up.”
“Then what’s your rush?”
“I have work to do,” Steve said.
“Not if it involves the trafficking of stolen body parts from the adjunct county morgue or the two doctors accused of infecting organ donors with West Nile virus,” the chief said. “They don’t concern you.”
“My friends are in trouble, and Burnside is using the bogus charges against them to smear my father,” Steve said. “I’m concerned.”
“Let me rephrase that,” the chief said. “We’re talking about federal cases, which are outside the jurisdiction of the LAPD. And even if they weren’t, you have a conflict of interest that would exclude you from being part of either investigation.”
“You’ve ordered me to eavesdrop without a warrant on the private conversations between a defense attorney and his client,” Steve said. “You are in no position to lecture me on jurisdiction, ethics, or the finer points of the law.”
“I’m the chief of police,” Masters said, his face taut with anger. “I’ll lecture you on whatever the hell I want to, and you’ll do as you are told. Burnside is using your father and these arrests to attack me. If you and your dad start investigating, you will be playing right into Burnside’s hands.”
“You expect me to turn my back on my father and abandon my closest friends?”
“If Burnside discovers that Dr. Sloan is using LAPD resources for his own purposes, it will confirm all the allegations that he’s made. It would be disastrous.”
“For you,” Steve said.
“For everyone,” Masters said. “Stay out of it and let the FBI investigation run its course.”
“Even if it means my friends are imprisoned and my father’s reputation is ruined.”
“Yes,” the chief said.
“I can’t live with that,” Steve said.
“Too damn bad,” the chief said. “You have no choice.”
“Sure I do,” Steve said. He reached into his jacket, took out his badge, and tossed it into the limo. “Problem solved. I’m a private citizen now.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
Steve stood up straight. “I want to do whatever I can to help my father and my friends.”
The chief picked up the badge. “Without this, you’re no good to them anyway.”
“It’s nice to know you think so highly of my detective skills.”
“Have you forgotten about Carter Sweeney?” the chief said.
“He’s your problem now,” Steve said.
“You’re deluding yourself if you honestly believe that,” the chief said and nodded to his driver.
The Town Car pulled away.
Steve watched as the vehicle drove up the driveway to the Pacific Coast Highway. As it surged forward into the traffic, the chief threw Steve’s badge out the window into the plants along the shoulder.
The badge glinted in the morning sun. It could have been a crushed beer can, a shard of glass, or some other piece of glittering trash.
Steve walked over and picked it up. The badge was dented. Somehow, that seemed fitting. He brushed the badge off on his pants leg and put it in his pocket.
His cell phone rang. He took it out and glanced at the caller ID on the readout. It was Tanis Archer.
“What’s up?” Steve asked.
“Tony Sisk just got a very interesting call at his house,” Tanis said. “You’ll never guess who is demanding an immediate face-to-face meeting with Carter Sweeney.”
Oh hell, Steve thought.
“Erase the recording,” Steve said.
“The chief is going to find out that your father is meeting with Sweeney,” Tanis said. “He’ll probably get a call the moment Mark shows up at the prison gates.”
“That’s not why I want you to delete the recording. I don’t want my father tied in any way to these illegal wiretaps,” Steve said. “He’s got enough problems.”
“And he thinks that seeing Ca
rter Sweeney is going to make things better?” Tanis said. “If your dad was smart, he’d run off to a secluded beach somewhere until after the election. Why does he want to see Sweeney?”
That was a good question. Steve didn’t have the answer, and he was angry with his father for not confiding in him.
He could understand why his father might want to confront Malcolm Trainor. At least there was a strand that connected Trainor in some way to the players in the body-parts case.
But why Carter Sweeney?
Did his father think that Sweeney was responsible for what was happening to Amanda, Jesse, and Susan?
If so, based on what? There was nothing tying Sweeney to those cases.
It was insane. And that, Steve realized, was probably why his father didn’t tell him anything about his suspicions.
“I don’t want to get into it now,” Steve told Tanis. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”
“You don’t know, do you?”
“I need you to find out everything you can about Mercy Reynolds, a nurse at Community General.”
“Does she have something to do with Sweeney?”
“I’m hoping you can tell me,” Steve said.
“Oh, boy,” Tanis said. “This is bad.”
“Frankly,” Steve said, “I think you’re being overly optimistic.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Amanda slept soundly on the hard cot in her cold, miserable jail cell. She could sleep anywhere, regardless of whatever discomfort or stress she was experiencing.
“It’s like a superpower,” Jesse had once told her.
It wasn’t quite that great, but it was a handy skill nonetheless. She was sure it was what allowed her to juggle two demanding jobs and not collapse from exhaustion.
She was awakened by a guard at six a.m., given a tray of dry toast, scrambled eggs, and a lukewarm cup of horrible coffee. For her appearance in court, the guards let her change out of her yellow county jail jumpsuit into the clothes she was arrested in. She was handcuffed and escorted to a van, which took her to the federal courthouse a few blocks away.
