Diagnosis Murder 5 - The Past Tense

by Lee Goldberg

  My ears popping, I dragged Harry to the entrance to the bomb shelter, dodging an uprooted tree and a cartwheeling couch as they flew overhead. I opened the doors and pulled Harry into the cement stairwell that led down to the bunker. I slammed the steel doors of the bomb shelter shut behind us, just as the twister hurled the Imperial into the kitchen like a child's toy. The car covered the stairwell, trapping us below.

  I dragged Harry down the concrete stairs, opened the doors to the bunker, and wrenched him inside, shoving the doors shut.

  As the twister tore at the earth above us and wailed against the concrete walls, I fumbled in the pitch blackness, feeling my way with my fingertips from the wound in Harry's throat to a spot just below it. I stabbed the steak knife into Harry's trachea and jammed the plastic tubing from the spray bottle into the crude incision, creating an airway so he could breathe.

  I took off my shirt, wadded it up into a ball, and pressed it against the gaping bullet wound, hoping to stop the bleeding.

  I closed my eyes and prayed that Harry would survive and that the walls would hold.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Today

  It was ten minutes past midnight when Mark Sloan finished telling his story to Steve, Amanda, and Jesse in the living room of his beach house.

  There were a few slices of cold pizza left in a takeout box on the coffee table. Embers glowed in the back of the fireplace. Outside, the rain still fell. It felt like it had been falling since 1962.

  Nobody asked what had happened to Harry Trumble. They all knew firsthand how his story ended.

  Harry survived, with a scar on his neck and a ragged voice that sounded like every word had to claw its way out of his throat. He remained a homicide detective. But one case would end up becoming his obsession and defining his career: the Clown Killer, a serial murderer who painted the faces of his female victims with clown makeup.

  The killer eluded capture, and over time the task force was slowly whittled down until it consisted of only Harry. For more than a decade, Harry single-handedly and single-mindedly pursued potential leads from his cubbyhole of an office, long after the public and the police force stopped looking for or caring about the Clown Killer.

  On the eve of Harry's retirement, with the Clown Killer all but forgotten and still at large, the detective faked a letter to himself from his nemesis. The act flushed out the killer, but at a terrible price. Furious about the faked letter, the killer came out of hiding to murder two wore women. Harry managed to catch him at last, with Mark's help.

  However, that wasn't enough for Harry. The detective gunned down the Clown Killer in cold blood. Harry wanted to be assured of justice before dying himself of a long illness that he'd kept hidden from everyone.

  "I never knew there were tornados in Los Angeles," Jesse said finally.

  "Until then, neither did I," Mark said. "I remember the twister destroyed some homes, a gas station, and a grocery store, but miraculously, there was only one fatality, and that was Chet Arnold. They found him impaled on a picket fence a block away."

  "How long were you and Harry stuck in that bomb shelter?" Jesse asked.

  "A few hours," Mark said. He glanced at his son, who was staring into the dying embers of the fire. "You're aw fully quiet."

  "It's a lot to absorb," Steve said, his voice flat and even.

  "You can dig up the old case files," Mark said. "I'm sure the facts are all there."

  "I'm not talking about the murders," Steve snapped back. "I learned a lot about you, about our family history, that I didn't know until tonight."

  "You sound angry," Mark said.

  "I don't understand why it took a murder for you to tell me that you've known Harry Trumble most of your life and that he was in love with Mom."

  Jesse shifted uneasily on the couch and stole a glance at Amanda, who seemed lost in thoughts of her own.

  "I didn't see what purpose it would have served," Mark said. "You worked in the same building for years. Harry could have told you himself and never did."

  "In a way he did," Steve said. "A couple of days before he died."

  Mark raised his eyebrows in surprise. "What did he say?"

  "We were in a car together on a stakeout. He said he was sorry we didn't get to know each other better, that he saw a lot of Mom in me. I told him I didn't know he knew Mom. He just smiled and said he introduced you to each other, and he left it at that."

  Mark and Harry never spoke of what happened in Northridge, or the storm killings, after that terrible day, although they worked together briefly on the Clown Killer task force. But they also made their peace, shortly before Harry's death.

  Harry confessed that he never really hated Mark for stealing Katherine from him. The truth was, he hated himself for not being the man Katherine wanted him to be. Every time he looked at Mark, he saw that man and the domestic life he was afraid to have.

  It was easier to hate Mark than himself and, in doing so, he pushed away the closest friend he ever had.

  Even so, Mark never let go of the guilt. Harry had been his best friend, and he couldn't help thinking that by taking Harry's first and only love, he was responsible for the man's loneliness and lifelong bachelorhood.

  "How come I've never heard about the Storm Killer case?" Amanda asked, speaking up finally. "A serial killer would have made big news in 1962."

  "Which is exactly why LAPD buried it, to avoid the scandal over their mistakes," Steve said and looked at his dad. "Am I right?"

  "Yes, but it was more than just that," Mark said.

  "Some things never change," Steve said.

  Jesse stared at Mark. "I can't believe you went along with the cover-up. That's not the Mark Sloan I know."

  "I was a different man then," Mark said quietly.

  "Obviously," Steve said, the bitter edge of his voice not lost on Mark.

  "Constance Whittington was told the truth," Mark said defensively. "I made sure of that myself. But it didn't matter to her. Even though her husband didn't actually kill anyone, she felt his actions were ultimately responsible for what happened. He was still a blackmailer and a panderer. The family was disgraced regardless."

  "So Chet Arnold's family was told that he was a murderer?" Amanda asked.

  Mark shook his head. "We couldn't prove it anyway. All the evidence was destroyed with the house. All the police had were my doubts about Whittington's suicide note and my word about a pair of socks."

  "And the bullet in Harry's throat," Jesse said.

  "The gun was never found," Mark said.

  "But you and Harry were there," Amanda said. "And so was Chet."

  "No, we weren't—at least not in any record you'll ever find," Mark said. "As far as the news reports on the tornado go, Harry and I were never there. Two unidentified people, one with a throat injury, were rescued from a home bomb shelter by neighbors. Our names were never mentioned."

  "Did Mom know?" Steve asked.

  "Yes," Mark said. "She knew everything."

  "Everything?" Steve pressed, looking his father in the eye.

  "So how did the police explain what Dr. Arnold was doing in a Northridge neighborhood he didn't live in?" Amanda asked, sparing Mark, at least momentarily, from having to answer his son's question.

  "They didn't," Mark said, grateful for the reprieve. "It remains a mystery, at least to the public."

  "But what about the families of those other women?" Jess asked. "Muriel Thayer, Ingrid Willis, and Clara Cohen? Didn't they deserve to know the truth about what happened to them?"

  "We couldn't prove that those women were murdered," Mark said. "We didn't exhume Ingrid Willis or Clara Cohen, but Dr. Barbette and I thoroughly examined Muriel Thayer's body before releasing it to her parents. There was no evidence of foul play. We didn't know how Chet could have killed them and made it look accidental."

  "We do now," Amanda said.

  "We do?" Jesse said.

  "Succinylcholine," Amanda said. "They were killed the same way as the
woman who washed up in front of this beach house."

  Muriel Thayer drove off a cliff. Ingrid Willis fell down a flight of stairs. Clara Cohen was buried in a mudslide when the retaining wall in her backyard gave way. But now Mark knew what had really happened. Each woman was injected with the paralytic drug, rendering her helpless to save herself from the horrific fate her killer staged for her. Chet put Muriel behind the wheel of a car and pushed it over a cliff. He threw Ingrid down a flight of stairs. And he buried Clara Cohen alive under a hillside of mud. The last minutes of their lives must have been filled with unimaginable terror.

  "Why couldn't you and Dr. Barbette find the drug in Muriel Thayer's body?" Steve asked his father.

  "Succinylcholine was undetectable at the time because it breaks down so quickly in the body," Mark said. "It wasn't until 1966, and the Coppolino murder case, that toxicologists finally discovered a way to detect the presence of the drug in a corpse."

  "It's a textbook case in forensics," Amanda said, and went on to explain that Dr. Carl Coppolino, an anesthesiologist in Florida, had murdered his wife, Carmela, and, allegedly, Colonel William Farber, the husband of his mistress, Marjorie, by injecting them with the paralytic drug, which was commonly used in his work. Initially, the cause of death for both victims appeared to be coronary thrombosis.

  The crime might never have been discovered but for the bitter end of the relationship between Coppolino and his mistress. Marjorie went to the police and told her story, leaving authorities with the difficult task of proving it.

  "It took months," Amanda said, "But toxicologists isolated metabolites of succinylcholine in the brain tissues of Coppolino's wife. Coppolino was convicted of second-degree murder for his wife's killing, but his lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, managed to win him an acquittal on Farber's death. Now we routinely test for those metabolites, among others, in every autopsy."

  "But we still wouldn't have known how Chet Arnold killed those three women if not for the dead body that washed up in front of this house," Steve said. "Whoever killed her knew exactly how those women were murdered and wanted you to know it."

  "Only one person could have known that," Jesse said. "Their killer. And he's been dead for over forty years."

  "That's what scares me the most," Mark said.

  "I don't believe in ghosts," Amanda said.

  "Neither do I," Mark said. "Especially ones who have digital cameras and can transfer a JPEG of an old LA Times front page to a memory card."

  "Maybe it's a very tech-savvy ghost," Jesse said.

  Steve got up and stretched. "Which brings us to the present and our Jane Doe in the mermaid suit. Her murder was a riddle we were supposed to solve. I figure the red hair relates to Sally Pruitt, and the slit throat evokes Tess Vigland, and the succinyl-whatever refers to the other three victims. But what's the point of the mermaid suit?"

  "The killer is saying he knew about the house in Northridge," Mark said. "It was on Langelinie Street. There's a world-famous statue of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid on a rock in Langelinie Quay in Copenhagen. Whoever the killer is, this is a game to him."

  "So who are we dealing with here?" Jesse asked.

  "One very sick and scary individual," Amanda said. "Who doesn't like women very much."

  "Or it's someone who blames Mark for what happened to Chet Arnold," Jesse said. "Someone who wants revenge."

  "If so, why wait over forty years to get it?" Mark asked. "And why not kill me instead of an innocent woman?"

  "Maybe he wants to toy with you first," Jesse said, "and was waiting until another storm hit on the same days in February to do it."

  "I don't think this is the first time since 1962 that there's been rain in mid-February," Steve said. "But I suppose it's worth checking out."

  "We also need to track down Chet Arnold's wife and children as well as Constance and Roland Whittington," Mark said, "and anybody else who was even tangentially involved in what happened in 1962."

  "What can they tell you?" Amanda asked.

  "I don't know," Mark said. "Maybe they'll say something that will help me figure out what the motive for this latest killing could be. Once we know that, we'll be a lot closer to discovering who the murderer is."

  "Unless he decides to make you his next victim first," Steve said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Mark slept deeply that night, but he relived the past once again in vivid, detailed dreams. When he awoke the next morning, it was as if he'd lived his life twice.

  He awoke with several questions from the past nagging at him. If he could find the answers, they just might be the keys to solving the new murder.

  Why did Chet slit Tess Vigland's throat and make no at tempt to disguise her murder as an accident?

  What happened to the blackmail film? And why didn't Alistair Whittington try to save himself by giving the film to Chet?

  He got out of bed and trudged to the kitchen to discuss the questions with Steve, but it was well past nine a.m. and his son had already left for work. Mark couldn't blame him for wanting to get an early start. Steve had a homicide investigation to lead, and he wouldn't get far until he identified the victim.

  The fog was thick over Santa Monica Bay, the ocean breeze blowing the light drizzle and the sea spray against the windows. He liked these gray days almost as much as the sunny ones. There was something comforting and beautiful about a deserted, windswept, foggy beach. Mark made himself a bowl of cereal with strawberries, washed it down with a few cups of strong coffee, then showered, dressed, and braved the traffic to Community General Hospital. The morning drizzle had become a heavy shower. The traffic barely moved.

  He turned on the radio to listen to the news, but his thoughts immediately drifted back to the murder and to the past. Old memories kept coming back, making it difficult to think about anything else.

  Maybe that was the whole idea.

  It occurred to him that the past might just be a clever distraction. The new killing could have nothing at all to do with what had happened in 1962.

  The killer could be an old adversary playing an elaborate mind game, showing just how much he knew about Mark and how easily he could manipulate him.

  There was only one man Mark knew who was capable of that.

  Carter Sweeney.

  The man's homicidal tendencies were hereditary. His father, Regan Sweeney, was a mad bomber who had terrorized Los Angeles and killed dozens of people. Mark captured Regan and sent him to the gas chamber, where he was put to death. Regan's son, Carter, became obsessed with revenge. He and his sister, Caitlin, tried to destroy everything Mark held dear—his reputation, his career, his family, and his friends. And when that failed, the Sweeneys blew up Community General Hospital, trapping Mark, Steve, Amanda, and Jesse in the flaming rubble.

  Mark survived that encounter, only to be kidnapped by the Sweeneys and forced to engineer a daring hundred-million-dollar robbery. He managed to foil the Sweeneys again, leading to their capture. They were sentenced to multiple life terms in prison for their homicidal rampage.

  Carter Sweeney was a brilliant and resourceful man. Could he have reached out from his prison cell and enlisted someone to terrorize Mark again?

  Mark doubted anybody was devoted enough to the Sweeneys to murder for them, but it wasn't a possibility he could entirely dismiss. If his investigation didn't turn up some compelling leads soon, he would make the journey to Pelican Bay Penitentiary and confront his cunning adversary face-to-face once again.

  Steve's first stop when he got to headquarters was the Scientific Investigation Unit, which was analyzing the stuff the beachcomber had found at Point Dume, the place where the unidentified victim was most likely dumped into the sea.

  The items included a Hot Wheels car, a charm bracelet, an earring, a watch, a fingernail clipper, a class ring, a fishing lure, a coat button, a nipple ring, and a cell phone. Most of the stuff was mass-produced and virtually untraceable.

  The easiest item to trace was the cell
phone, which be longed to Tia Davidoff, twenty-seven, of West Covina. Officers were sent to her home and found her alive and well. She'd lost the cell phone on the beach a week before the murder, so she wasn't even a potential witness.

  The watch was identified as a Fossil, and from the serial number on the back the techs were able to trace it to a gift shop at Universal City Walk, a shopping center adjacent to the movie studio. It was a discontinued style, purchased three years earlier. The manufacturer was being contacted to see if whoever bought the watch had sent in a warranty card. Otherwise, there wasn't much hope of identifying the owner of the timepiece.

  The coat button, with a distinctive hawk etched on the surface, came from a Stanton-brand men's raincoat, a line carried exclusively by Nordstrom department stores. Tens of thousands of Stanton raincoats had been sold over the years.

  The techs had better luck with the class ring. It was manufactured in China under license by the Rossiter Jewelry Company of Clayton, Nebraska. The ring was the company's popular "Continental" style, individualized for the graduating class of Northgate High School in Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles, two years ago. A police officer had been sent out to the school to get a copy of the class yearbook.

  Steve left them to their work and went to see the file clerk in the basement. They spent two hours trying to dig up the files on the Sally Pruitt and Tess Vigland homicides. They finally found them in a water-stained, dust-covered box deep in the bowels of the storage room. Steve blew the dust and cobwebs off the box and brought it upstairs to his desk.

  The files were undamaged and surprisingly complete. He found crime scene photos of Sally Pruitt and Tess Vigland, as well as their autopsy reports. He also found black-and-white studio portraits, most likely school photos, of Muriel Thayer, Ingrid Willis, and Clara Cohen. There were also crime scene photos of Alistair Whittington and his home, inside and out.