The Last Word

by Lee Goldberg

  And she’d infected two organ donors around the same time that Gaylord Yokley, a ROAR member and black-market gun dealer, was arming the gangs in hopes of sparking a street war and plunging the city into anarchy.

  And she worked at the same hospital where two funeral homes, with ties to Malcolm Trainor and that did business with MediSolutions, were stealing body parts from corpses and selling them.

  Connections. Coincidences.

  And more connections. And more coincidences.

  Steve couldn’t put all the pieces together to make a clear picture. It was a muddle. But he knew they fit somehow. The more he tried to sort it out, the more confusing it became.

  “What have you learned about Mercy?” Tanis asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  “She’s dead,” Steve said. “I’m at her place.”

  “Suicide?” Tanis asked.

  “Her body is in the entry hall,” Steve said. “She was shot once in the chest and once in the head.”

  “Summary execution,” Tanis said. “I guess Mercy must have misbehaved.”

  “Or someone was concerned that she might.”

  “Someone who either is a professional killer or knows how to find one,” Tanis said. “This changes things in a big way.”

  “It certainly does,” Steve said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  It wasn’t fate that had been pursuing Mark Sloan. It was Carter Sweeney. Mark knew that now, but it gave him very little comfort. In some ways, fate and Carter Sweeney were one and the same for Mark.

  On the long drive back to Los Angeles, Mark thought about his encounter with Sweeney, who’d basically admitted to conspiring with other murderers inside Sunrise Valley State Prison to frame Amanda, Jesse, and Susan for crimes. And all to get back at Mark for what he’d done to them.

  Somehow Carter Sweeney, Malcolm Trainor, and perhaps everyone else Mark had ever convicted had pooled their intellect and resources to come up with a plan. And then they’d managed to oversee the funding and execution of their plot from within the prison walls.

  It was truly an audacious undertaking. There were so many elements that had to be controlled, so many contingencies that had to be anticipated, and so much groundwork that had to be done in order to pull it all off.

  But their plan was only as good as the people who actually carried it out. And for that, Sweeney and his fellow prisoners had to rely on people on the outside.

  The only name Mark had was Mercy Reynolds, but surely she wasn’t working alone.

  Where did they find Mercy Reynolds and how did they get her to do their killing?

  Did Noah Dent hire her at MediSolutions and did he have anything to do with her getting a job as a utilization nurse at Community General? Did Dent know what Mercy was planning to do? Was Dent part of the conspiracy or was he simply being manipulated?

  Mercy knew the answers, but Mark didn’t think she’d tell him unless he could apply some pressure.

  He didn’t have any leverage against her. But with what little knowledge he had, and what he could guess, perhaps he could play Dent and Mercy off one another.

  Mark decided to try Dent first. It would be easier to break Dent than a stone-cold killer who’d calmly injected helpless patients with a deadly virus.

  Unless Dent was every bit as cold as Mercy was.

  It was a chance Mark would have to take. As soon as he got back to LA, he would book himself on the first flight out to Phoenix, which was where MediSolutions was based. And while he was there, he would also find out how closely involved Dent was with the funeral homes that were part of the body-parts scandal.

  Somehow Sweeney, Trainor, and company had managed to get some Mob-controlled funeral homes into the body-parts business and to forge Amanda’s name on key documents.

  Mercy probably had something to do with the forged documents. She might even have been the one funneling cadavers and body parts to the funeral homes.

  But why, Mark wondered, would the funeral directors be willing to face possible jail time for the sake of a bunch of imprisoned killers seeking revenge? What was in it for them?

  Perhaps they didn’t know they were being used and ultimately set up. Perhaps they were just in it for the money and really believed they were working with Amanda the whole time. It would certainly make their testimony more convincing.

  The more Mark thought about it, the more he saw the cunning logic in setting up the funeral directors that way. It also meant one less link to Sweeney and company.

  So, somehow, Trainor had conned his former associates into getting into a body-parts business with Amanda—only it wasn’t really Amanda they were dealing with. If they were dealing with anyone, it was probably Mercy acting as an intermediary.

  Mark wondered what Mercy’s motivation was. He doubted it was money. It had to be something personal. Whatever it was, it placed her in the center of the conspiracy.

  But as far as Sweeney knew, Mark didn’t know anything about her. That gave Mark a slight edge and some time.

  But Sweeney wasn’t a stupid man, and neither were the people he was working with. They knew how persistent Mark could be. They knew he’d eventually find her. And they knew the damage she could cause if he did.

  They would take precautions.

  If they had some kind of strong personal connection with her, they would make her disappear, creating a new identity and life for her somewhere far away from Los Angeles.

  Or they could kill her.

  The thought terrified Mark—without Mercy, he was lost.

  And so were Amanda, Jesse, and Susan.

  He couldn’t worry about that now. It was out of his hands. He hoped Steve would find Mercy before she either disappeared or was silenced.

  In the meantime, something else troubled Mark. It was the timing of the scandals, which became public at the height of the mayoral race and right before Sweeney’s habeas corpus hearing.

  The scandals had already worked in Burnside’s favor, though Mark couldn’t see what Sweeney and his friends gained from his becoming mayor. Burnside was the DA who’d put most of them behind bars. Sweeney and company couldn’t be any fonder of Burnside than they were of Chief Masters. Nor could Mark see how either Burnside or Masters as mayor bolstered Sweeney’s bid for freedom.

  So what was the point? And why time the scandals to break now?

  And where did Gaylord Yokley’s little gang-war plot fit in? Somehow, it did, because the arrest happened about the same time that the Community General scandals were revealed.

  Mark wondered what would have happened if Teeg Cantrell hadn’t tried to shoot his girlfriend, Yokley hadn’t been arrested, and the gang war had erupted as planned, turning Los Angeles into a battleground.

  It would have been a national story, perhaps even international news. Neither the media nor the public would have paid much attention to the scandals at Community General, despite the lurid nature of the crimes.

  Mark considered the ramifications of that scenario for a few minutes and then looked at the Yokley case from another angle.

  Why did Yokley tell Cantrell that his girlfriend was cheating on him? How did Yokley find out and why did he care?

  Mark decided to turn the Yokley case inside out and see what possibilities it raised.

  What if Cantrell was set up? What if Sweeney had always intended for Yokley to be arrested, his weapons seized, and the gang-war plot to be revealed?

  What if things had actually turned out exactly the way Sweeney had wanted them to?

  If so, how did the arrest help Sweeney and his fellow killers at Sunrise Valley?

  Mark didn’t know.

  There were hundreds of different ways to look at everything that had happened, what didn’t happen, and what might have happened, but he still couldn’t see the shape of Sweeney’s plan.

  Rather than try to figure it out, Mark decided to take an easier approach. He would start with Sweeney’s goals and work backwards from there.

  There was no
confusion about what Sweeney’s intentions were. He wanted to destroy Mark Sloan and get out of prison.

  What had Sweeney said?

  The idea is for you to lose everything and everyone that’s important to you, to leave you alone and miserable for the rest of your long life in a prison of our making.

  Sweeney had already made significant progress on that goal. Mark had lost his job, his reputation was in ruins, and his closest friends were in jail for crimes they didn’t commit.

  Everything and everyone.

  But the one person in the world who mattered most to Mark was his son.

  It was Steve who’d arrested Sweeney, Trainor, and the others.

  It was Steve who’d cracked the Yokley case.

  There was no way Sweeney was going to let Steve go unscathed.

  Mark had to warn Steve—but what could he tell him? Be careful? It seemed woefully inadequate. How could Steve protect himself without knowing what form the threat might take?

  For all Mark knew, the plan was moving inexorably forward and Steve was ruined already, but it just wasn’t obvious yet.

  And when it was, it would be far too late for Mark to do anything to save him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Before leaving Mercy Reynolds’s apartment, Steve gave Tanis the phone number from Mercy’s caller ID. Tanis told Steve the name, Rusty Konrath, and the address in West Los Angeles that went with it.

  Then Steve called the LAPD dispatcher to report the murder. He waited for a couple of uniforms to show up at Mercy’s apartment to secure the scene for the CSI guys and then he left.

  It probably wasn’t the smartest career move he’d ever made, but Steve figured that sticking around would be a waste of his time. He would learn more about who’d killed Mercy Reynolds by visiting Konrath than he would by hanging out at her bungalow while the crime scene mice dusted and photographed everything.

  Rusty Konrath lived in a neighborhood of bland apartment buildings and condos west of the San Diego Freeway, south of Wilshire Boulevard and north of Santa Monica Boulevard. It was a neighborhood favored by UCLA students for its proximity to the Westwood campus, just a mile away.

  Konrath’s apartment was on a gentle slope overlooking a high school built in the late 1940s in the Italian Romanesque style, all brick and arched windows. It was one of many old, overcrowded, and decaying Los Angeles schools in desperate need of earthquake retrofitting, which the city couldn’t afford to do.

  That was the gist of the campaign stump speech Neal Burnside was making at a podium on the front steps of the school to a crowd of parents, students, and teachers when Steve arrived.

  Steve parked in front of a fire hydrant and walked up to the apartment building, Burnside’s speech echoing up and down the street. Burnside was vowing that when he was elected mayor, he would march to Sacramento and demand the funds necessary to keep the community’s children safe.

  Burnside was the last person Steve wanted to see right now. He was afraid he might slug the guy for making Mark a campaign issue. So Steve didn’t hang around to listen to the speech or say hello. He had more important things to do.

  The door to the apartment building lobby was propped open with a bent piece of torn cardboard to prevent it from closing and locking, which completely undercut the whole point of the security buzzer system.

  He checked the mailboxes to see which apartment was Konrath’s, then slipped into the lobby, wedging the piece of cardboard back in place.

  He took the stairwell and was only one flight up on his way to the third floor when he heard the crack of a rifle shot. It came from at least one floor above. He could hear screams and pandemonium outside.

  He drew his gun and raced up the stairs. He paused at the door to the second floor, pulled it open, and swung into the hallway in a firing stance.

  The corridor was empty. Everyone must have been outside listening to the speech, attending classes at UCLA, or at work.

  He waited a moment to see if anyone came running out, then moved up two flights to the next floor, glancing below every few seconds in case anyone came charging into the stairwell.

  Steve paused at the third floor, opened the door slowly, and looked down the hall. An apartment door was ajar at the far end.

  He moved cautiously down the hall, his heart pounding, his ears attuned to the slightest sound. He reached the half-open door.

  It was Konrath’s apartment.

  Another coincidence.

  There were too damn many of them, and this one gave him a dull ache in the pit of his stomach. It was the same ache he felt whenever he went to get a cavity filled. He knew he was going to get his teeth drilled, something no amount of Novocain could make endurable for him, and yet he walked into the dentist’s office anyway.

  Because he had to. It was the right thing to do. But at least it was his decision to face the nightmare.

  This was worse.

  He was caught up in a series of events that he couldn’t undo. It would be like trying to reverse the course of a river.

  It was like fate. Just as inescapable, just as certain, driving him relentlessly forward towards a predetermined outcome. Only it wasn’t some unknowable cosmic force shaping these events.

  It was a person.

  These thoughts passed through Steve’s mind in the nanosecond between when he recognized Konrath’s apartment number and when he kicked open the door.

  Steve swung low into the room, ready to shoot anything that moved.

  Nothing did.

  It was a one-bedroom apartment, furnished on the cheap with thrift-store finds and snap-together Ikea sale items. There was a smear of blood on the entry hall floor, and it led to the kitchenette.

  Steve peered around the corner into the kitchen area. The body of a young man, perhaps in his late teens or early twenties, was on his back on the floor, his arms raised above his head. He wore cargo shorts and a T-shirt. Rusty Konrath had been shot once in the chest and once in the head and dragged by the arms into the kitchen.

  Steve knew what he was going to find next. He knew it as if he’d lived this moment before or had been given a script in advance.

  But he had to see it anyway.

  His heart was pounding so loudly it felt to him like someone was hitting the side of the building with a battering ram.

  Steve stepped into the living room. One of the windows was open. A rifle with a scope sat on the floor in front of the window, along with a pillow where the shooter had rested his knees.

  He peered out the window. He had a direct, unobstructed view of the high school steps.

  Of course.

  There was a crowd around Neal Burnside’s body behind the podium. People were screaming and pointing in the general direction of the window where Steve now stood.

  Someone had shot Neal Burnside. And if the shooter was the same professional who’d killed Mercy Reynolds and Rusty Konrath, then Neal Burnside was almost certainly dead.

  Steve had shown up within seconds of the shooting. The killer hadn’t fled into the stairwell and probably didn’t take the elevator. Which meant the killer was still in the building. Or at least he was until Steve entered Konrath’s apartment.

  But it was too late for Steve to start searching now. Officers were undoubtedly swarming around the building and charging up the stairs. Whether they found Steve in the hall, the stairwell, or the elevator, the outcome would be the same.

  Steve holstered his gun, took out his badge, and clipped it to his jacket so when the cops came rushing in they wouldn’t shoot him.

  He raised his hands, too, just to be safe.

  Two uniformed officers and one detective burst into the room, their guns aimed squarely at Steve’s chest.

  The detective was Olivia Morales. She didn’t seem very happy to see him.

  “He’s one of us. I know him,” she said, but she didn’t lower her gun. “What are you doing here, Steve?”

  “I didn’t shoot Burnside, if that’s what you’re asking,
Olivia. I was in the building running down a lead in a murder case. I heard the shot and ran up here, hoping to catch the shooter. It’s just a coincidence.”

  But even as he said it, he knew that it wasn’t.

  Mercy’s murder, the message on her tape machine, all of it was intended to bring him right here, right now. Things were only going to get worse for him from this point on. He was certain of that.

  “I’m going to need to take your gun,” she said.

  Given their relationship, there were a lot of cute ways he could have answered that question to ease the tension in the room. But this wasn’t the time for cute. He simply nodded.

  She motioned to one of the officers, who stepped forward, patted Steve down, and took his gun. The officer placed it in an evidence bag.

  “You two secure the floor,” Olivia said, holstering her weapon and taking the evidence bag from the officer. “I’ll stay with Lieutenant Sloan.”

  He knew that he had to be treated like a suspect. He didn’t resent Olivia for it. He would have done the same in her position.

  And then it hit him.

  Olivia’s being here was yet another coincidence. She was working the Yokley case. Her presence was every bit as strange and convenient as Steve’s arrival on the scene.

  It wasn’t the hand of fate, but someone’s hand was involved. He had no doubt about that.

  “It was a big surprise seeing you come through the door,” Steve said.

  “It was a bigger surprise seeing you standing where the sniper should be.”

  “You know why I’m here,” Steve said.

  “I’m still vague on the details,” she said.

  So he told her, from the beginning. And when he was done, he said, “What’s your story?”

  “Mine’s a lot simpler. Burnside called me an hour ago, said he needed to see me right away. He told me to meet him at the high school,” Olivia said. “I guess I’ll never find out why now.”

  “So he’s dead.”

  “As can be,” she said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The narrow street in front of Mark Sloan’s beach house was clogged with police cars. Mark’s first, horrifying thought as he drove up was that Steve had been killed, but that quickly passed when he saw that there were no vehicles from the medical examiner’s office or the morgue.