by Lee Goldberg
He was so relieved he almost didn’t care what the police were doing at his house.
Mark parked on the shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway, waited for traffic to pass, then opened his door and got out. He was heading for his house when one of his neighbors, walking a wonderfully coiffed poodle, stopped him.
Prentiss Cloud was a jeweler in his fifties with tanning-parlor skin and a head of white hair that rivaled his poodle’s. Cloud seemed to be wearing the entire inventory of his Malibu store on his neck, ears, and fingers at all times.
“Enough is enough, Dr. Sloan,” Cloud said. “Your home is a magnet for crime and disaster. We’ve seen it all at your house. Bombings, murders, robberies, shootings, kidnappings, plagues, and rapes.”
“There’s never been a rape,” Mark said.
Cloud glared at him. So did the dog. “Do you know why the police are here this time?”
“No,” Mark said.
“Maybe it’s rape. Or a beheading. Or perhaps they’ve finally found Osama bin Laden,” Cloud said. “Anything is possible at the Sloan residence.”
“I’m sorry for the inconvenience.” Mark started to go past him, but Cloud blocked his way.
“This is where we live, Dr. Sloan. This is where we seek peace, comfort, and security. Maybe even a little privacy,” Cloud said. “But that’s not possible with you as a neighbor. Do us a favor and move. Do the world a favor and go somewhere remote where you can’t make life miserable for your neighbors.”
Cloud marched off with his poodle, their gaits almost matching. Mark wasn’t angry at Cloud. He’d been expecting his neighbors to show up outside his house with torches for years.
Mark approached the house but was intercepted by a uniformed police officer, a woman who looked like she could bench-press a Toyota.
“Hold it,” she said. “You can’t go in there.”
“I’m Dr. Mark Sloan and that’s my house,” he said. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”
She spoke into her radio. “I’ve got Dr. Sloan out here.”
“I’ll be right out,” a male voice crackled back.
“Stay here,” she said.
He looked over her shoulder and saw a crime scene tech walk out of the house carrying a clear plastic evidence bag that contained several handguns.
Mark had never seen the guns before. Steve had only three, but one was always on him and another was in the lockbox in his trunk at all times.
The tech was followed out a moment later by Lieutenant Sam Rykus, chewing on a fat cigar, his belly straining against the buttons of his shirt.
“Sam,” Mark called out. “What’s going on?”
“We’re searching the place,” Rykus said. “You want to see the warrant?”
“I want to know why you’re doing it,” Mark said.
Rykus stared at him. “You’re joking, right?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
“The DA was assassinated an hour ago,” Rykus said. “He was shot while giving a speech at a high school.”
Mark was stunned by the news, but he tried to stay focused on the situation at hand.
“You think that I did it?” Mark asked. “You think that because he criticized me on TV I’d shoot him?”
“No,” Sam said.
“I’ve just returned from a visit to Sunrise Valley Prison. They must have me on a hundred cameras,” Mark said. “Alibis don’t get much better than that.”
“You don’t need one, Doc.”
“Then why are you searching my house?”
“Burnside was shot from an apartment building across the street,” Rykus said. “We found Steve in there with the sniper rifle.”
Everything and everyone.
“You know Steve,” Mark said. “You know he would never do something like this.”
“That’s what I thought,” Rykus said, then jerked his head back towards the house. “But we found an arsenal hidden in there and a rifle just like the one at the apartment.”
“Then they were planted,” Mark said.
Rykus shrugged. “We’re gonna be here for a few more hours. Any minute now, the media is gonna start showing up here. Maybe you want to be somewhere else.”
Mark nodded, grateful for the advice, and walked back to his car, lost in his thoughts.
He knew with absolute certainty that the rifle used to kill Burnside and the guns Rykus found in their house were going to be linked to Gaylord Yokley’s weapons cache.
Because it all fit.
Everything and everyone.
Mark could finally see how the plot Sweeney and his friends had concocted worked. All the pieces were falling into place so rapidly in his mind that it was dizzying.
That’s when he was yanked backwards, nearly off his feet, as a car whizzed by, so close he almost felt the metal brushing his legs.
It snapped him out of his daze and he realized that he’d stepped out onto the Pacific Coast Highway without even bothering to look for traffic first.
How stupid.
He knew the highway was there. He’d even faced the traffic before, and he still didn’t see what was coming.
It was the past few weeks of his life, neatly summed up in one near-death moment.
He turned to the female officer who’d saved him.
“Be careful,” she said.
Mark nodded and said that he would, but it was far too late for that.
Steve leaned against his car outside of Konrath’s apartment building. He was waiting to be questioned by whoever the lead investigator in the case turned out to be.
For the moment, the lead investigator was Olivia, the highest-ranking officer on the scene who wasn’t caught practically holding the murder weapon.
There were two officers standing a polite distance away from Steve, pretending to be disinterested but in fact watching to make sure he didn’t flee for the Mexico border.
Which was a good thing, because he was tempted.
But like the generally law-abiding citizen that he was, he stayed put and watched Olivia work.
She’d confiscated the film from the cameramen who’d been covering the speech, an act that was bound to raise all kinds of screaming about First Amendment rights. But it was worth the legal risk to secure the footage before it could be edited and any potential clues lost. She then moved the reporters and all the other media who’d since swarmed to the scene two blocks back behind a police barricade.
Steve would have done the same things in her position, freedom of the press be damned.
Meanwhile, the apartment building and the entire neighborhood were being searched, inch by inch, for any evidence or witnesses that could lead them to the assassin.
LAPD helicopters and a horde of news choppers buzzed loudly overhead, making it necessary for everyone on the street to shout in order to be heard.
Steve’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He took the phone out and answered it.
It was Tanis, but he could barely hear her.
“You’re in big trouble,” Tanis said.
“Believe me, I know.”
“It’s worse than you know,” Tanis said. “All of our bugs on Tony Sisk just went dark.”
“They’ve been discovered,” Steve said.
“Gee, you think? And within minutes of Neal Burnside’s assassination,” Tanis said. “Am I the only one freaked out by the timing?”
He glanced at Olivia, who was conferring with Chief Masters, who’d just arrived on the scene. He wondered if Masters knew the surveillance on Sisk had been compromised or if he’d pulled it himself when he learned where Steve was when Burnside was killed.
But what about Olivia? What was she doing there? How did she get in the building so fast? There was one explanation that came to mind, one he didn’t like very much. It put their whole relationship in a disturbing new light.
“I need you to run a check on all of Olivia Morales’s phones,” Steve said. “I want to know when, and if, she got a call from Burnside
’s office today.”
“I can’t do that,” Tanis said.
“We’re talking about a few keystrokes on that supercomputer of yours.”
“I’m nowhere near my supercomputer.”
“Where are you?”
“Where I can’t be found,” Tanis said.
“I need you.”
“I can’t do you or me any good if I’m in jail,” Tanis said. “We’ve been set up and we’re both going down.”
“So you’re going to run?”
“Hell yes.”
A car pulled up a few yards away and Special Agent Ort got out, followed by two other agents.
Steve got a beep from call-waiting. He glanced at his cell phone readout. The caller was his father. He put the phone back to his ear.
“I have to go,” Steve said. “Good luck, Tanis.”
“You too.”
Steve disconnected from Tanis and switched over quickly to Mark. He assumed his father knew about Burnside’s murder, and he didn’t have time to give him the details of his own plight.
“I only have five seconds, Dad. Mercy Reynolds is dead. Her boyfriend was a member of ROAR who was killed in a bank holdup.”
“Carter Sweeney is behind it all,” Mark said. “He told me.”
“I don’t suppose he signed a confession,” Steve said.
“No,” Mark said.
“Then I’m going to need a lawyer,” Steve said and hung up, sticking the phone in his pocket as Ort approached.
“Lieutenant Sloan,” Ort said, shouting to be heard over the noise, “you’re under arrest for the assassination of Neal Burnside.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The interrogation room at the Federal Building looked a lot like the interrogation room at police headquarters. The same paint color. The same lighting. The same hard, uncomfortable furniture. Steve wondered if there was some obscure law somewhere that dictated exactly how interrogation rooms had to be designed and furnished. Or maybe they’d just used the same interior decorator.
“Daydreaming, Lieutenant?” Ort asked, holding a file under his arm and pacing in front of Steve.
“I have to entertain myself somehow,” Steve said.
“You find this funny?” Ort said. “The DA was assassinated and you were found in the sniper’s perch.”
“No, I don’t think it’s funny,” Steve said. “I think it’s infuriating. You’re wasting valuable time questioning me when you should be out there looking for the assassin. But I’ve come to expect this from you, Ort. This is the second time you’ve bungled a murder investigation.”
“The second?”
“You arrested Jesse and Susan for the West Nile virus killings,” Steve said. “You let the real killer go free, long enough for someone to silence her.”
“And who might that be?”
“Mercy Reynolds, the utilization nurse,” Steve said irritably. “I explained that to Detective Morales and I’m sure that she told you. I was investigating a homicide and that’s what led me to Konrath’s apartment.”
“At the precise moment that Burnside was shot,” Ort said.
“I told you why I was there,” Steve said. “There was a message on Mercy’s answering machine. I ran the number, and the address that came up was the apartment building.”
“There is no message on the tape machine,” Ort said.
“Then it’s been erased,” Steve said.
“Of course it has,” Ort said. “When you say you ‘ran the number, ’ what you mean is that you got the information from Tanis Archer, who is presently assigned to the Anti-Terror Strike Force.”
“Yes,” Steve said.
“Is Mercy Reynolds a terrorist?”
“Ask the next of kin of the people she killed.”
Ort smiled. “Why did you have Tanis Archer get you the information rather than calling your office or your contact at the phone company?”
“She happened to call me at the right moment,” Steve said.
“From her desk in Anti-Terror.”
“She has quite a computer system there.”
“Yes, she does,” Ort said. “We traced an unauthorized incursion into our FBI database to her computer. She accessed information on our case against Dr. Amanda Bentley.”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“You’re a lousy liar. Tanis Archer discovered that Mercy Reynolds was a government witness, that she’d agreed to testify against Dr. Bentley and her coconspirators,” Ort said. “Archer discovered that arrangements were being made to place Ms. Reynolds in the Witness Protection Program. So you had to act fast. That’s why you killed her last night and then pretended to discover her body this morning to deflect suspicion from yourself.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Steve said.
Ort pulled out a chair and took a seat across from Steve. He placed a file on the table and removed two pieces of paper from it for Steve to see. It was a ballistics report and a fingerprint analysis.
“The sniper rifle came from Yokley’s house,” Ort said. “It was one of the weapons that you recovered that you neglected to log. The rifle was wiped clean, but you missed a spot. We found a partial print of yours.”
“It doesn’t make me the shooter,” Steve said. “It just means I touched the rifle in Yokley’s house or afterwards when we were tracing the weapons. Do you think if I killed Burnside I would have just stood there with the rifle, waiting around to be caught?”
“You’ve had a stormy relationship with Burnside for years. And then he went on television and trashed your father, ruining his reputation. That must have infuriated you.”
“Not enough to kill him,” Steve said.
“Maybe you were ordered to do it.”
Ort opened the file and spread out a series of eight-by-ten glossy photographs on the table in front of Steve. They were grainy surveillance shots of Steve and Tanis in phone company uniforms planting bugs outside of Tony Sisk’s house and in the garage of his building.
Steve felt like he’d taken a gut punch, delivered by Carter Sweeney himself. The scope of Sweeney’s machinations and manipulations over the last few weeks was becoming clear to him now.
“How many years have you been violating civil rights, planting evidence, and committing murders as the chief’s covert operatives?” Ort asked. Steve remained silent. “Killing Burnside was just one more mission, wasn’t it? You knew that after you shot Burnside there was no way you could get away in time, so you concocted this story about a call to Ms. Reynolds from Rusty Konrath, an innocent victim whose fatal mistake was having an apartment with a clear view of the high school. You remained at the scene because you knew it was the one thing no assassin would ever do. You were essentially hiding in plain sight.”
Ort had the facts right, but they didn’t point to Steve. They pointed directly at someone else.
“It wasn’t me. It was Olivia Morales. She didn’t get a call from Burnside asking her to come meet him at the high school. She was in the building already because she was the shooter,” Steve said. “She knew I was coming. Olivia shot Burnside and hid somewhere on the third floor until I went into Konrath’s apartment. Then she waited in the stairwell for the officers, fooling them into thinking she’d run into the building moments ahead of them. She probably killed Mercy Reynolds and Rusty Konrath, too.”
Ort shook his head and sighed. “Why would she do all that killing?”
“I don’t know,” Steve said. “But it involves Carter Sweeney.”
“Why stop there?” Ort asked. “Maybe I was involved. And the Vatican. And SpongeBob SquarePants.”
“Olivia Morales and I worked the Yokley case together from the start,” Steve said. “We became lovers. She knew everything I was doing. She had access to my home. She was setting me up the whole time.”
“The reason Burnside called her was because he had these pictures,” Ort said. “Someone slipped them to him. He knew you and Olivia Morales had become intimate. He was hoping she cou
ld give him more information about your covert ops for Chief Masters.”
“Did Olivia tell you that?”
“ADA Karen Cross did,” Ort said. “If you really want to bring someone else down to save yourself from death row, don’t waste my time with this crap about Morales. Get serious and start cooperating. Testify against Masters and everyone else involved in this conspiracy.”
“There is no conspiracy,” Steve said. “Except the one perpetrated by Sweeney, Mercy Reynolds, and Olivia Morales.”
Ort motioned to the photos and reports on the table. “The evidence says otherwise. This is a limited-time offer. Because once we apprehend Tanis Archer, we’re going to make her the same offer, and you know she’ll take it. Sure, she’ll do some time—but you’ll die.”
Steve met Ort’s gaze. “We’re done talking. Let me know when my lawyer gets here.”
Ort got up and headed for the door.
“You must be awfully devoted to Chief Masters to sacrifice yourself for him,” Ort said. “I’m sure he appreciates it.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
It was a nightmare that kept getting worse. Mark’s son was in jail for murder. The only hope Mark had left was that Amanda, Jesse, and Susan would be released on bail soon so they could somehow help him find the proof to clear them all.
But Arthur Tyrell had just taken that slim hope away from him. Mark sat down slowly on the couch in Tyrell’s office and tried to absorb this latest body blow.
“Would you like a drink?” Tyrell asked, strolling over to his wet bar.
“I don’t drink,” Mark mumbled.
“This would be a good time to start,” Tyrell said.
“I don’t think so,” Mark said. “I need a clear head.”
“The problem is that you’re seeing things too clearly, and so am I,” Tyrell said, mixing himself a martini. “You need to blur the picture a bit so you can relax.”
“My son has been arrested for murder and so have Jesse and Susan. Amanda is imprisoned for looting bones and organs from the dead,” Mark said. “How can I relax? I have to get them all out and prove that they are innocent.”
