Diagnosis Murder: The Death Merchant

by Lee Goldberg

  Wyatt destroyed the shredder out of spite, then removed the hard drives from all three computers in the office, though he doubted he'd find anything useful on them. For a moment he toyed with the idea of paying a visit to Dr. Plume's apartment in Marina Del Rey. Wyatt was sure he could easily torture the doctor into talking, assuming Dr. Plume had anything useful to reveal. But Wyatt couldn't do that without killing Dr. Plume afterward.

  It just wasn't Wyatt's style. Although Dr. Plume was probably guilty of dozens of crimes, he was still technically an innocent. It was a subtle distinction, even for Wyatt, but enough to save the doctor for now.

  Even so, Wyatt wouldn't forget Dr. Morris Plume. The doctor's day of reckoning would come.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The overwhelming impression Josephine Candella gave to everyone who met her was one of roundness. Round face, round belly, round shoulders, and a round mouth that always seemed in the midst of saying "Oh!"

  Josephine was on a bed in the ER, clutching her husband, Phil's, hand, looking desperately at Dr. Mark Sloan with her big round eyes. "What is it, doctor? Gallstones? Appendicitis? Stomach cancer?"

  "It's none of those things, Mrs. Candella," Mark said to the woman, who'd been rushed in from work that morning complaining of severe abdominal pain. He flashed her a big smile. "You're pregnant. Congratulations!"

  Josephine and Phil Candella stared at Mark in shock.

  "That's not possible," Josephine said. "Are you sure it's not something I ate?"

  "Not unless you swallowed a ten-week-old baby whole."

  "Oh," she said, then mumbled to herself, "I thought I was putting on a little weight."

  "You don't understand," her husband said to Mark. "She can't be pregnant."

  "She most certainly can," Mark said. "And she is."

  "But I'm sterile," Phil exclaimed.

  Now it was Mark's turn to say "Oh." Josephine Candella flushed guiltily and looked like she might say "Oh," too. Then again, she always looked that way.

  "Maybe you're not as sterile as you thought. Life is full of surprises," Mark edged back toward the door. "Someone will be down from obstetrics to talk to you both shortly. Congratulations again."

  Mark slipped into the hall and took a deep breath. He'd have to warn the doctor from obstetrics that she might be stepping in the middle of a major marital battle.

  "Dr. Sloan, could I have a word with you?"

  Mark turned to see Clarke Trotter, Community General's legal counsel, approaching him from down the hall.

  "What's up, Clarke?" Mark said.

  The attorney patted his considerable belly as if he was also carrying a ten-week-old child. "How was your vacation in Hawaii?"

  "Eventful," Mark said, making some notations in Mrs. Candella's file and dropping it off at the nurse's station. "But I'm glad to be back."

  "That's what I wanted to talk with you about," Clarke said. "Since you returned, you've worked one week and then went off again for three days."

  "Something important came up," Mark said.

  "Another homicide investigation, perhaps?"

  "What are you getting at, Clarke?"

  The attorney patted his stomach and tugged on his red tie. It was his tell. Bad news was coming. "You're supposed to be chief of internal medicine at this hospital."

  "Isn't that what I'm doing?"

  "Not when you're gallivanting around indulging your hobby," Clarke said.

  "Gallivanting?" Mark said. "Do people still say that?"

  "With all due respect, doctor, we aren't paying you a salary to solve crimes," Clarke said. "We're paying you to practice medicine."

  "Clarke, how many vacation days have I taken in the last ten years?"

  "I don't know offhand," Clarke said. "I'd have to check."

  "Zero," Mark said. "How many sick days have I taken?"

  "Dr. Sloan, you're missing my point."

  "I understand what you're saying," Mark said. "But I think I've earned a little flexibility with how I choose to allocate my hundreds of days of accumulated vacation time and sick leave."

  "Have you considered taking an extended sabbatical instead?" Clarke said. "Or have you given any thought to retiring?"

  "No, I haven't." Mark said, an edge to his voice.

  "This isn't personal, Dr. Sloan. I'm merely voicing the board's concern," he said. "It would be one thing if your outside time was devoted to medical research or something of that nature. But the activities you've chosen don't always reflect well on the hospital."

  Mark looked Clarke Trotter straight in the eye. "One of our board members spends most of his time gallivanting from one European or tropical medical conference to another, all his expenses paid for by pharmaceutical companies we do business with. I don't think that reflects well on this hospital. Another board member is gallivanting with one of our young nurses behind his wife's back. I don't think that reflects well on the hospital, either. Shall I go on?"

  "That won't be necessary," Clarke said.

  "I'd be glad to have this discussion with the board," Mark said. "Why don't you pencil me in on the agenda and we can get all this gallivanting on the record."

  "There's no need to do that," Clarke said. "I'll convey your sentiments privately to the board. Please think about what I've said. We can talk about this again another time."

  "I'd rather not," Mark said.

  Clarke smiled as if he hadn't heard and waddled away.

  It wasn't the first time Mark had clashed with hospital administrators over his work assisting the police with homicide investigations, and he knew it wouldn't be the last. The criticism had waned for many years, but ever since a mad bomber he had pursued blew up half the hospital, the board had, not surprisingly, taken a much dimmer view of his investigations.

  But Mark had to concede that Clarke Trotter had a point. The truth was that paperwork was piling up on his desk. Since returning from Hawaii, Mark had been totally preoccupied by the investigation. It was even worse now that the leads seemed to have dried up. He was having trouble sleeping at night, unable to stop going over the details of the case in his mind.

  Mark resolved to move that paperwork off his desk and dive into his administrative duties at the hospital. But first, he decided to stop by the path lab on the way to his office to see if Amanda had anything to report.

  Amanda was finishing up an autopsy when Mark came in. She draped a sheet over the dead body and greeted him with a smile.

  "I was just about to call you," she said, stripping off her gloves and heading for her desk.

  Mark motioned to the corpse. "Suspicious circumstances?"

  Amanda glanced back at the autopsy table. "Him? No. Died of natural causes, but because he lived alone, his body wasn't discovered for a few days. I was going to call you about this." She handed Mark a computer rendering of a woman's face. "This came in from Claire Rossiter. She sent you a copy in case the FBI wasn't in a sharing mood. This is how Stella Greene looked before plastic surgery."

  Mark recognized the face immediately. "It's Diane Love."

  The rendering was even better than the one Rossiter had done of Danny Royal, which made sense, since she had the actual face to work with instead of photos and measurements. Mark had to give Dr. Plume credit. He'd made Diane Love completely unrecognizable and did so without making her look like she'd obviously had lots of cosmetic work done. It was unfortunate for Dr. Plume that his skill wasn't shared by the surgeons he allowed to work on him.

  "Your investigation is definitely on the right track," Amanda said.

  "Only we're several laps behind," Mark said. "For all we know, the other two fugitives are dead already."

  "Take it easy on yourself, Mark. The other guy has a five year head start on you. Look at the remarkable progress you've made in just a few weeks."

  "Unfortunately, you can measure that progress in corpses," Mark said. "It's all for nothing if we don't apprehend the fugitives alive."

  "Even if you don't get to them in time, the
hit man is still out there," Amanda said. "You're going to catch him."

  "I won't rest until I do," Mark said.

  "Which means neither will I," Amanda said. "And just so there's no misunderstanding, that's not a complaint. That's a commitment."

  Mark smiled. "I appreciate that, Amanda."

  He turned to go when Terry Riordan marched into the lab, clearly enraged.

  "I'm glad to see you, because I want you to hear this," Terry said to Mark. "Dr. Bentley has seriously compromised our investigation."

  "Are you talking about this?" Mark held up the rendering from Claire Rossiter.

  "No, but it proves my point," Terry said, snatching the paper from him. "Your circle of friends can't be trusted. Your forensic anthropologist buddy is E-mailing FBI evidence to everyone in her address book—"

  "I think you're exaggerating just a bit," Mark interrupted. But Terry continued, ignoring Mark's interruption. "And God knows how many people know the serial number of the breast implants, thanks to you and Dr. Bentley."

  "I only talked to Mark and the manufacturer of the implant," Amanda said. "No one else."

  "Then maybe you can explain why last night somebody broke into Dr. Plume's office, shredded his files, and stripped his computers."

  "I thought you had the clinic under twenty-four-hour surveillance," Mark said.

  "That's beside the point," Terry snapped defensively.

  "The fact is, someone else knew we'd traced the implant back to Dr. Plume. And now we have nothing."

  "How did you find out about the break-in?" Mark asked.

  "Dr. Plume's lawyers showed up screaming at my office this morning, accusing us of doing it," Terry said. "I wish we had."

  "How do you know Dr. Plume didn't do it himself?" Mark said. "Maybe he faked the break-in to cover up destroying any evidence that he's helped felons create new identifies for themselves."

  "Witnesses saw a Pacific Bell service van in the alley behind the building last night," Terry said. "The van was reported stolen before we had our meeting with Dr. Plume, which means whoever took it knew what we were after be fore the doctor did."

  "Unless the doctor was alerted before we got there that we were on the way," Mark said.

  "Which brings us right back to this office," Terry said, glaring at Amanda. "And the shoddy handling of evidence."

  "Did it occur to you that the leak might be somebody in the implant manufacturer's office?" Amanda said, glaring right back at him. "Of course, if your agents were better at surveillance, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You'd be talking to whoever broke in to the clinic."

  "Good point," Mark said.

  Terry shifted his anger to Mark. "I warned you about keeping this in the family. Now you know why. Thanks to you, our best hope of tracking down the fugitives is lost."

  "We know who did the break-in," Mark said. "It was either Standiford's hit man or someone working for him."

  "Which is why I'm flying to Vegas in half an hour to meet with federal prosecutors," Terry said. "We're going to offer Standiford a deal."

  "He won't take it," Mark said.

  "Then he can look forward to spending the rest of his life in prison," Terry said firmly. "We're redirecting our efforts in this case. Standiford is now the focus of our investigation. We're going to squeeze him until he talks."

  "He never will," Mark said. "You're wasting your time."

  "Thank you for your input," Terry said, "but we won't be needing it anymore. You and your friends are no longer part of this investigation. We'll call you when it's over."

  And with that, Terry Riordan walked out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Steve took a slice of pizza from the Domino's box on the kitchen table and carried it back to the living room, where Amanda, Jesse, and Mark were eating.

  Mark had just finished summarizing the latest developments in an investigation that he was no longer part of, which was, as it turned out, the latest and most interesting development.

  "So if you're no longer involved in the case," Steve said as he sat down, "why are we all gathered here this evening?"

  "Because he didn't mean it," Mark said.

  "He sounded pretty clear to me," Amanda said.

  "I'm always getting thrown off investigations," Mark said. "Ask Steve."

  "The LAPD is thinking of printing up a form letter detectives can hand him to save them the hassle of telling him," Steve said.

  "I'm only welcome on an investigation when I have something unique to contribute," Mark said. "I don't at the moment. But as soon as I do, they'll welcome me back as if I'd never left."

  "I don't know why you'd want to go back," Jesse said. "Riordan is just using you when it suits him to further his own career."

  "Unfortunately, it's not a question of what Dad wants," Steve said. "The FBI is in charge of the case. He has an obligation to go to them when he discovers any new leads."

  "I have an obligation to go to the authorities," Mark said. "Whether or not it's Terry Riordan or the FBI remains to be seen."

  "Have you come up with something?" Steve asked.

  "Not yet," Mark said. "But I think I know how we should approach the investigation."

  "Terry threw you off the case," Steve said. "You cross his path, he'll come down hard on you."

  "That's not a problem, because we're on different paths," Mark said. "He's in Las Vegas, betting on Standiford to crack, and that's not going to happen. Jason Brennan and William Gregson kidnapped and killed Standiford's daughter; there's nothing Terry Riordan can threaten to take from him that he hasn't already lost."

  "There's his freedom and his wealth," Jesse said, browsing through Dr. Plume's plastic surgery brochure.

  Mark shook his head. "It means nothing to him compared to what he's lost. It's only a means to get him what he wants, which is vengeance."

  "So what's your new take?" Steve said.

  "It's not new," Mark said. "I've actually been considering it for awhile. I'm just not sure it's going to work. There are a lot of variables we can't control. Instead of chasing the fugitives, we'll chase the hit man."

  "Isn't that what the FBI is doing?" Jesse asked.

  "Terry is squeezing Standiford," Mark said. "We're going to ignore Standiford and concentrate on other wealthy relatives of violent-crime victims."

  "You want to find another rich family the hit man has contacted," Amanda said, "find out what they know, and see if they can lead us to him."

  "I want to do more than that," Mark said. "I want to find his next client before he does and set a trap for him."

  "You mean," Jesse said, "that you want to find a grieving family with deep pockets who are pissed off at law enforcement for not finding whoever killed their loved one."

  "Yes," Mark said.

  "And then you want to convince them to help us nab the one guy who can get them the vengeance they want," Jesse continued.

  "Yes," Mark said.

  "No problem," Jesse sighed. "How hard could that be?"

  "I know it's a long shot," Mark said, "but I don't see any other alternative."

  "It could take months, Mark," Amanda said. "Maybe longer. We might never find the right family."

  "He manages to," Mark said. "It's how he makes his living."

  "I meant a family willing to set this guy up," Amanda said.

  "We could get lucky," Mark didn't sound very convincing.

  "Does this mean you're giving up on beating him to the other two fugitives?" Amanda asked.

  "No, I'm still going to try," Mark said. "I can't help myself. It's keeping me up nights. The problem is, I don't have the slightest idea where to begin. Terry was right—Dr. Plume was our last, best lead. We're fresh out of clues."

  They all sat quietly for a long moment, listening to the waves, thinking about the arduous task in front of them.

  "Look at the boobs on this lady," Jesse said, pointing to a woman in the brochure. "They could probably qualify as flotation devices." The others
looked at Jesse, who shrugged. "I'm just studying the evidence at hand."

  "Now that you mention the evidence," Mark said, "there is one thing that's been bothering me."

  "Just one?" Steve asked.

  "That's usually a good sign," Amanda said.

  "You mean that it's just one thing," Jesse asked her, "or that something is bothering him?"

  "Keep looking through that brochure," Amanda replied. "Maybe Dr. Plume offers a brain enhancement."

  "Why did Stuart Appleby go to the trouble of making a note of Diane Love's location, putting it in an anagram and locking it away in his safe-deposit box?" Mark said.

  "He must have liked her," Jesse said.

  "But why not keep track of the others, too?" Mark said.

  "Maybe he did, but he kept that information at home," Steve said. "And it went up in smoke."

  "I thought about that," Mark said. "But why would he keep one at the bank and the others at home? And another thing, why did Diane have a recipe card, too?"

  "Isn't it obvious?" Amanda said. "So she'd know where to find Appleby."

  "How hard would it be to remember the name of his restaurant?" Mark said. "Did she really need a recipe card for that?"

  "Maybe she liked the recipe," Jesse said.

  Amanda glared at him.

  "And why didn't she keep track of the others?" Mark said.

  "Maybe she did in some way, and nobody has found out how yet," Steve said. "Or maybe Appleby and Love didn't like the others and didn't care what happened to them."

  "There's something we're missing," Mark said.

  "There's a whole lot we're missing," Amanda said.

  "Have you ever read Highlights for Children magazine?" Jesse asked.

  Amanda glared at him again. "You're not helping."

  "It used to be in my orthodontist's waiting room," Jesse said, undeterred. "My favorite part was the hidden pictures. You'd have to find the fish or the toothbrush or whatever was hidden in a bigger picture."

  "What are you getting at?" Amanda asked irritably.

  "Maybe there's something in the pictures on the recipe," Jesse said.