Diagnosis Murder 5 - The Past Tense Read online

  To Dr. D. P. Lyle, for creating the illusion that I know what I am talking about.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For the purposes of these books, Mark Sloan and his son, Steve, are younger than Dick Van Dyke and Barry Van Dyke, the actors who played the characters in the TV series. Mark is in his sixties and Steve is in his early for ties... and through the magic of fiction, they never age. It's a shame we can't all be fictional characters, isn't it?

  A major portion of this story takes place in February 1962. While the events and characters are fictional, one thing is true: Southern California was pounded by a devastating and deadly series of storms that caused enormous damage and killed two dozen people. The historical and meteorological events described in this story actually occurred, though some artistic license has been taken with the chronology and some of the geography.

  I am indebted to Zoë Sharp, Rhys Bowen, Stephen Booth, John Baker, Lee Child, Jan Curran, Ralph Spurner, Twist Phelan, Gen Aris, Stan Barer, Paul Bishop, Ann Tomlin, Robbie Schwartz, and everybody on the DorothyL mailing list for their technical, cultural, and historical advice. Special thanks to William Rabkin and Tod Goldberg, my unofficial editors, and to Dan Slater, my official one, and to Gina Maccoby, my agent with a license to kill.

  But despite all those contributions, this book would not have been possible without my wife, Valerie, and my daughter, Madison, with their love, support, and home made cookies.

  I would like to hear from you. To contact me, visit www.diagnosis-murder.com.

  PROLOGUE

  It was a good day for killing.

  Dark clouds covered the sun like dirt on a coffin. The streets were muddy rivers. The sewers were clogged with trash, leaves, and unread newspapers. There was no one on the boulevard except the young woman. The rain had driven everyone else indoors. Even a slight drizzle threw Los Angelenos into confusion. A genuine rainstorm generated panic.

  She wasn't dressed for rain. Nobody in LA ever was. They couldn't imagine a day without sunshine and felt naked without sunglasses. But those same people could blithely accept living in a place where they breathed poison, where the ground could suddenly heave under their feet and lay waste to everything.

  She was one of those people Los Angeles was where she was born and raised and where she would die. He knew her entire life story, beginning and end.

  He was the end.

  She walked into the wind, clutching her jacket closed over her blouse and short skirt, as if she were afraid the buttons might not hold.

  She was oblivious to everything but her own discomfort, cursing out loud at her miserable fate. If she'd actually known her fate, she wouldn't have been cursing. She would have been screaming. But she didn't see the man in the car, parked at the curb of a side street, across from her.

  She stopped at the bench on the corner and looked up and down the street, clearly hoping to see her bus on its way. She gave him a fine opportunity for a full appraisal. She was in her late teens, with fiery red hair. Her legs were long and pale, her body thin but with some unexpectedly generous curves that her wet clothes only accentuated.

  He put the car into drive and slowly eased out into the street, timing it so he would reach the intersection in front of her just as the traffic light turned red.

  It was a long light and he was right at the curb. His windows were slightly fogged, just enough to obscure his face. Even so, he knew she was looking at him, dry and warm and comfortable. He knew she was imagining how nice it would be inside his big car, surrounded by all that rich leather and wood, away from the cold and the rain.

  He glanced casually in her direction and caught her staring at him. She turned her head, pretending to check again for the bus she knew wouldn't be there. And when she looked back, soaked to the bone and shivering, the passenger-side window of the car was already down, and there he was beyond it, smiling at her. Without even being aware of it, she took a step towards the car, beckoned by the open window and drawn by the warm air escaping from inside like the heat from a fireplace.

  He knew he had her then, even before he offered her a ride, even before she saw his face and made her choice. Her body foreshadowed her intent, betraying her one last time.

  She got into the car, slammed the door shut, and buck led up, thanking him for his thoughtfulness.

  The light turned green and he moved slowly into the intersection, rain beating down on the car. The rhythmic swish of the windshield wiper blades, repeatedly swaying across the glass, was strangely soothing, almost like soft music.

  After a moment, she sunk into the plush seat and let out a contented sigh, relaxed and grateful, feeling absolutely no fear at all.

  That would come later.

  He wasn't in any hurry. He was calm, completely at peace. Perhaps she sensed that. Perhaps that was what fooled her. Perhaps that was what fooled them all.

  It felt good to be killing again.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Dr. Mark Sloan awoke that February morning to an empty house, feeling as if he hadn't slept at all.

  He hadn't slept well the last few nights. It could have been the rain, which had pummeled the house all night long. Maybe he wasn't accustomed to the sound anymore, the rainstorm coming after one of Southern California's prolonged droughts, which had left the hillsides brittle, dry, and prone to wildfires.

  Only a few days ago, the newspapers had been full of dire warnings about the parched soil, about catastrophic crop failures and uncontrollable fires, about the desperate need to conserve water before Los Angeles withered away from thirst.

  Now, after three days of rain, those concerns were gone. Instead, everyone was worried about the water-saturated soil, about deadly flash floods and gigantic landslides, sweeping power outages and gridlocked free ways. Sandbags were being handed out at firehouses across the county. TV stations were interrupting regular programming with live "Storm Watch" reports, as if the city were facing an imminent hurricane instead of a common rainstorm.

  Sometimes Mark wondered if what really worried people was having nothing to worry about.

  It wasn't raining that morning, though the dark clouds remained, exhausted from the long night of thundering and pouring, gathering their strength before unleashing their mayhem again.

  As Mark made himself coffee and looked out at the beach, covered with seaweed, driftwood, shells, and trash churned up by the stormy seas, he realized he'd been sleeping poorly for a while now.

  It had started when he'd witnessed a woman leaping out the window of her office building. She'd survived, but the memory of that horrible moment tormented Mark's sleep until he discovered what had driven her to attempt suicide and then solved the problem for her.

  But even after that, sleep didn't come easy. He'd broken his arm in a car accident, and the cast made it difficult for him to get comfortable in bed. Once the cast was removed, his arm was sore for weeks, making it hard to get a good night's rest.

  Perhaps it was age, he thought. As much as he hated to admit it, he wasn't a young man anymore. He was in his sixties. His days of eight hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep might be gone for good.

  He took his coffee to the kitchen table and sat, watching a flock of seagulls circling over the sand and picking at the enormous clumps of seaweed. He listened to the crash of the waves, the squawk of the gulls, the settling of the house, and the windlike whoosh of cars passing by on the Pacific Coast Highway.

  He was acutely aware of the emptiness of his Malibu beach house, which seemed to double in size whenever his son, Steve, was away.

  Steve lived on the first floor, but lately he had been spending more and more nights at his girlfriend's apartment.

>   Although his son's job as an LAPD homicide detective kept him busy and out of the house a lot, Steve's presence had been there even if he wasn't. If Mark didn't run into Steve at night, or on his way out in the morning, there would always be signs that he had passed through. Dishes in the sink. Sandy tennis shoes on the deck. Case files on the coffee table. Recently, however, the house looked the same in the morning as it had the night before.

  Maybe it wasn't the rain, or his arm, or his age, that was causing him to rest so uneasily, Mark thought. Maybe it was being alone.

  He immediately rejected the idea. Loneliness couldn't be the problem. His life was full of people and activity. Between his work at the hospital and consulting on homicide investigations for LAPD, he had very little time alone. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he should be savoring the time to himself.

  Or was that what he was afraid of?

  Was all the work simply a way to avoid being alone?

  Ridiculous.

  Mark set his empty coffee cup aside. As a doctor, he knew the best prescription for what ailed him: a brisk walk on the beach, followed by a scalding shower and a big, healthy breakfast rich in fruit and fiber. Two hours from now, he would feel rested and energized and ready to work. All this moping would be forgotten.

  Until tomorrow morning anyway.

  He changed into an old pair of jeans, a faded sweat shirt, and his most comfortable pair of ragged tennis shoes and hurried down the steps from his second-floor deck to the beach below.

  Mark paused on the bottom step and took a deep breath, luxuriating in the crisp, clean air, rich with the ocean mist. That was one of the great things about a storm—it washed the gunk out of the air. Of course, that meant the muck was dumped onto the streets, where it was swept into the gutters and out to sea, where— He abruptly dropped that line of thought, deciding it was better to just enjoy the fresh air than to think about how it got that way.

  The sand was pleasantly thick under his feet, soaked and pockmarked by raindrops. He was dismayed by the amount of trash that had been washed ashore amidst the seaweed, driftwood, and palm fronds. Styrofoam cups, fast-food cartons, newspapers, candy wrappers, cigarette stubs, beer bottles...

  It could be worse, he thought. A few years back, the morning surf had littered the shoreline from Manhattan Beach to as far north as Ventura with thousands of used syringes that'd been illegally dumped into the sea.

  As he worked his way around and over the obstacles in his path, his walk became more of a slog. Ahead of him, the seagulls picked and fluttered and fought over a pile of kelp resting above the berm. From the smell drifting his way on the ocean breeze, Mark guessed that the carcass of a seal had washed ashore, tangled in the rubbery vines and tiny bladders.

  As he got closer, he saw the hint of a fin and the silver glint of scales. It wasn't a seal after all, but rather some kind of large dead fish.

  Mark turned, and was about to continue on his walk, but curiosity got the better of him. No fish he'd ever seen had a tail fin quite so perfect or scales that shone so bright. He had to know what it was.

  So he grimaced against the stench and crouched beside the mound of seaweed, scattering a thousand flies and infuriating the gulls, which continued to hover low over him, squawking their fury at his intrusion.

  Using a stick of driftwood, he brushed away dozens of hungry sand crabs and carefully parted the strands of sea weed to get a better look. First he saw the long, graceful fin, tapering to a fantail at its point. Then, as he cleared more kelp, he saw a mane of fiery red hair.

  For a moment, he simply stared in disbelief.

  It was a mermaid.

  Her face was ghostly pale, almost translucent. Her eyes were wide and green, her lips slightly parted, her slender throat slit from ear to ear.

  * * *

  It started to rain again just as the crime scene techs finished erecting the tent over the clump of seaweed where the woman's body had been found.

  While she was being kept dry, scores of officers and forensic investigators were getting drenched as they moved slowly up and down the beach, looking for clues in a race with the rain and tide, both of which threatened to wash away any remaining evidence.

  Dr. Amanda Bentley, the medical examiner, squatted beside the body, waving away the swarm of flies and sand crabs that stubbornly refused to give up their claim to the corpse.

  "She isn't a mermaid. She's wearing a costume," Amanda said. "And those big openings on either side of her throat aren't gills."

  "I figured that much out for myself," Mark said, studying the body.

  The only reason that he was still allowed to be at the crime scene was that Dr. Amanda Bentley worked for him, too. She was staff pathologist at Community General Hospital, where her lab doubled as the adjunct county morgue. Amanda not only juggled two jobs but also was a single parent, raising a six-year-old son. And she did it all with seemingly boundless energy and enthusiasm. Mark couldn't figure out how she pulled it off.

  "It's not going to be easy determining time of death," Amanda said, "but judging by the lividity, the shriveling of the skin, and the lack of bloating, I'd say she's been in the water no more than eight to ten hours. I'll know more after I get her on the table."

  "This may come as a shock to you," a familiar voice said, "but I'm actually the homicide detective in charge of the investigation."

  They turned to see Steve Sloan entering the tent, water dripping from his umbrella, his hair surprisingly dry. His badge was clipped to his belt.

  "I know it's just a small technicality," Steve said, "but shouldn't you be saving your report for me?"

  Amanda shrugged, tipping her head towards Mark. "He was here first."

  "That's only because the body washed up in his front yard," Steve said.

  "Isn't it your front yard, too?" she asked. "Come to think of it, weren't you wearing those same clothes yesterday when I saw you at the beheading?"

  "Beheading?" Mark asked.

  "Never mind," Steve said.

  "This couple, married for thirty years, is sitting down to dinner," Amanda said. "The husband turns to his wife and says that the casserole she made for dinner is too salty. So his wife does the natural thing. She smacks her husband with a cast-iron frying pan, cuts off his head with an electric carving knife, and tosses it out the window."

  "What happened to the casserole?" Mark asked.

  "She's not one to waste food. She kept it and offered to serve it to us while we worked the crime scene." Amanda glanced at Steve. "I didn't think it was salty, did you?"

  Steve shook his head.

  Mark stared at his son in disbelief. "You ate the casserole?"

  "It wasn't the casserole that killed the guy," Steve said.

  "In a way it was," Amanda said.

  "Could we please move on?" Steve said.

  "You're right," Mark said. "Let's stick to the point. Steve spent the night with his girlfriend."

  Steve groaned.

  "What girlfriend?" Amanda said. "He's never mentioned a girlfriend. Who is she?"

  "Her name is Lissy," Mark said. "She used to work nights as a technical support operator until her job got outsourced to India. Now she's studying for her real estate license. He made her a coffee table. Not from scratch, of course. One of those snap-together things from Ikea."

  "They don't just snap together," Steve said. "There's fifty parts you've got to assemble with hundreds of special screws and interlocking bolt thingies using only this tiny little tool they give you that's impossible to get a good grip on."

  Mark and Amanda stared at him, making him feel self-conscious. He cleared his throat.

  "Do you think we could discuss something else now?" Steve motioned to the body. "Like, for instance, this dead mermaid

  "She's not a mermaid," Mark said. "It's a costume."

  'Thank you, Dad," Steve replied. "It's nice to know I won't have to go to Atlantis to interview suspects. What can you tell me, Amanda?"

 
"I'm not a forensics expert, but I'm certain this wasn't where she was killed."

  "Because there are no signs that she bled out here?" Steve asked. "The blood could have been washed away by the surf."

  "It's not the lack of blood," Amanda said. "It's the body. She's covered with postmortem scrapes and some deep, ragged gashes. She didn't get them from being splashed by the tide on a soft, sandy beach. This body was slammed against a rocky shoreline a few times before washing up here. I'd bet she was in the ocean most of the night."

  Mark sighed. "Which means that for the moment the victim herself is the only evidence we have to work with to solve her murder."

  "We?" Steve asked.

  "She did wash up in my front yard," Mark said.

  "That doesn't mean you've got the right to start investigating her murder."

  "Of course it does," Mark said.

  "I have the strangest feeling I've experienced this conversation before," Amanda said.

  "Send that mermaid costume down to the crime lab as soon as you can, okay?" Steve said.

  "Sure," Amanda replied. "If you like, I can also finish your end of the argument for you. I think I know all the lines by heart. I can even tell you who wins."

  "I know who wins," Steve said, leading his father out of the tent, putting his arm over his shoulder and sheltering him from the rain under his umbrella. They headed for the beach house.

  "You've got some kind of luck, Dad."

  "What do you mean?"

  "A couple months ago you walked in on a murder at the house next door. Now a corpse washes up on the beach, practically on your porch."

  "Our porch," Mark corrected.

  "If I was one of your neighbors," Steve said, "I'd move."

  CHAPTER TWO

  Russell "Cork" Corcoran liked to tell the rookie life guards under his command that he was the inspiration for David Hasselhoff's character on Baywatch. He told Steve Sloan the same thing as they drove in his life guard patrol truck to the southern edge of Point Dume state beach. Steve would have had an easier time believing Cork's story if David Hasselhoff was thirty pounds overweight and tried to hide a bald spot under six wispy strands of hair combed over from the other side of his head.