Diagnosis Murder 6 - The Dead Letter Read online

  "That's a tricky question," Steve said. "We aren't entirely sure yet."

  "We?"

  "Me, your wife, and the La Quinta police," Steve said. "I'll tell you more about it on the way down to the parking garage."

  "What's in the garage?"

  "Your car," Steve said. "Which reminds me, you better bring your keys."

  The two men didn't speak to one another again until they were alone in the elevator Yankton hit the button for the parking garage and turned to Steve.

  "You mentioned my wife and the La Quinta police," Yankton said.

  "I don't know what your weekend has been like, but let me tell you about mine," Steve said. "After you trashed your house with a sledgehammer, your wife, Vivian, called her lover, your partner, Jimmy Cale, who set her up in an apartment in Marina del Rey. He was supposed to join her there Saturday night. When he didn't show, she got worried and went over to his place. His car was parked in the driveway, but his front door was wide open. She went inside and found everything smashed, blood on the floor, and no sign of Cale. That's where I come in."

  Yankton cleared his throat. "Is Jimmy dead?"

  "You tell me," Steve said. "But if you're going to confess, wait until I read you your rights."

  "I didn't kill Jimmy," Yankton said.

  "Did you trash his house?"

  "No," Yankton said.

  "It must have been another angry husband with a sledgehammer" Steve said. "Right, Bert?"

  Yankton didn't answer. He reached into his jacket for his cell phone to call his lawyer, but thought better of it after remembered two things: There was no reception in the Parking garage, and his lawyer didn't know the first thing about criminal law.

  The elevator reached the garage and stopped with a disconcerting jolt. The doors slid open like the curtains on a stage at the opening of a play. Yankton gasped involuntarily at the drama that was already unfolding.

  His parking space was cordoned off with yellow police tape. The trunk and all four doors of his BMW were wide open. Several uniformed officers were standing guard as a team of half-a-dozen crime lab technicians in blue jumpsuits went over his cat

  "I guess I won't need your keys after all," Steve said as they stepped out of the elevator.

  "You better have a search warrant," Yankton said. He'd watched enough TV cop shows to know that much.

  Steve reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to Yankton. "Here it is. Hold on to it for your scrapbook. It will go nicely with the one they issued down in La Quinta, where the police are searching your place as we speak."

  "What are you looking for?" Yankton's voice was barely more than a whisper.

  "Evidence of murder," Steve said.

  "This is crazy. Jimmy could be anywhere. He could be in Vegas right now, have you thought of that? He goes up there for quick trips all the time. Flies up, gambles all night, and straggles in here at ten o'clock looking like hell." Yankton glanced at his watch. "He could be here any minute."

  One of the crime lab techs motioned Steve over to the trunk. Her name was Leslie Stivers, and the tech squad jumpsuit didn't do her any favors. But Steve was one of the few in the department who didn't need to use his imagination to know what she looked like without it.

  Steve went over to her, gesturing to Yankton to follow.

  "What have you got?" Steve asked her.

  She aimed a special light into the trunk. Several spots glowed bluish-white

  "What's that?" Yankton asked.

  "It's blood, Bert," Steve said. "We sprayed the trunk with luminol, which detects hemoglobin and makes it glow when hit with the right light."

  "I spilled some spaghetti sauce in there once," Yankton said. "Maybe that's what it is."

  "It's not," Steve said.

  "Someone attempted to clean it off, but whoever did it missed a few spots in the back," Leslie said. "He also missed this."

  She reached into a dark corner with a pair of tweezers and picked up something, holding it up for them to see.

  "Is that a thumb." Steve asked.

  Leslie shook her head. "Tip of a big toe. Hacked off the left foot, I think."

  Steve glanced over at Yankton, whose face was ashen.

  "Mondays are hell, aren't they, Bert?" Steve said.

  CHAPTER ONE

  On another Monday, nearly five years after the most miserable morning in Bert Yankton's life, Monette Hobbes stood in line at the Tarzana post office, waiting to send all the stuff she'd sold on eBay.

  Monette's hobby was shopping and, thanks to eBay, she'd found a way to subsidize it. She visited the outlet malls in Camarillo, Ontario, and Cabazon when they were having sales. She would use her AAA Club card to get free discount coupon books at the mall offices, and then she'd hit the stores, scooping up tons of brand-name items at rock-bottom prices.

  She always kept a few things from her shopping sprees for herself and her twenty-year-old daughter, LeSabre, who could wear anything with that body of hers. Monette listed most of the clothes and shoes she bought for auction on eBay as soon as she got home. Whatever she couldn't sell, she simply returned to the stores on her next visit for a full refund or store credit. That was rarely necessary, since she usually sold most of what she listed, and the profits from her little entrepreneurial enterprise financed her own discretionary shopping fund above and beyond the household allowance her second husband, Lowell, gave her each month.

  She was very pleased with her ingenuity and the success of her business. Monette wasn't going to make the cover of Forbes magazine anytime soon, but it made her feel good about herself anyway. Besides, it was fun, something to do now that her daughter wasn't living at home anymore and, for the first time in nearly two decades, Monette was a homemaker with no home to make.

  The only downside was the twice-weekly chore of going to the Tarzana post office to send her goods and pick up mail from the box she rented for her eBay business. But she even found a way to turn the chore into something that made her feel special.

  Monette always spent her time in line looking at the display case full of Edgar Rice Burroughs' memorabilia that ran through the center of the lobby. Burroughs wrote the Tarzan novels, and he used all that money he made to buy a huge ranch, which he subdivided in the twenties into a housing tract named after his most famous character.

  She never tired of studying the sales brochures for the original Tarzana subdivision, the yellowed Tarzan novels, comic books, lobby cards, and toys, the faded photos of Burroughs, various actors playing Tarzan, and the Tarzana area when it was still farmland.

  Looking at everything in the display case made it seem like living in Tarzana was something romantic and steeped in Hollywood glamour, which by extension, meant that so was she. It meant that her fifties-era Tarzana tract home wasn't simply a disposable example of mass-produced housing—it was something of cultural significance, built on hallowed ground. It meant her post office was more than a post office—it was a museum, a place that tourists might travel hundreds of miles to visit but that she could go to anytime she wanted. It meant that Monette Alicia Hobbes was privileged.

  Lately, Monette had needed those self-esteem boosters wherever she could find them. She was feeling unappreciated at home. Abandoned. Forgotten. And fat. Her husband, Lowell, was never around, and now her daughter, LeSabre, wasn't either. Perhaps that was why she checked her positive feedback score on eBay every day and why, a year ago, she'd hired a private detective to follow Lowell and see what he was up to.

  She had been afraid that Lowell was having an affair. It cost her fifteen hundred dollars of her hard-earned eBay profits to find out that her fears were unfounded, that her second husband wasn't going to abandon her for some waitress the way her first husband, Desmond, did (the one who impregnated her in the backseat of his father's Buick LeSabre, the nicest car she'd ever been in).

  It was a silly fear, really. Lowell ran a Pep Boys auto supply store. His hands were always greasy and covered with calluses.
Every day he wore the same drab uniform, a baseball cap and a stained gray shirt with his name written on a dirty white patch. He was thin, with a flat chest and a lazy belly.

  It was silly of her to think Lowell was stepping out on her. What kind of woman was going to fall for him anyway?

  He was lucky to have her. It made her sick to think about all the things she could have bought with the fifteen hundred dollars she'd spent to discover the obvious.

  She finally reached the front counter and chatted with Rene, the huge Polynesian postal worker, about his six kids while he weighed her packages and applied the correct postage. Then she strolled back across the lobby to unlock her mailbox and get whatever checks and money orders had come in from customers too afraid of identity theft to use PayPal.

  But the only thing in her box that day was a fat manila envelope with no return address that had been bent in half and jammed inside by some uncaring postal employee.

  Monette carried the envelops back to her Windstar minivan, sat in the front seat, and opened it up. There was no note inside, just a dozen eight-by-ten glossy photographs with a crease down the middle.

  She pulled them out and propped them between her lap and the steering wheel so she could look at them.

  There were pictures of Lowell and her sweet, beautiful little LeSabre walking hand in hand down the street. Monette smiled—the two of them looked so good, and it warmed her heart to see the affection between the two most important people in her life. She couldn't believe how fast her daughter was growing up. LeSabre looked so adult, so confident, so sexy. Monette's heart swelled with pride, but then she wondered why neither of them was looking at the camera, and who took the picture and why she wasn't in it, too. She quickly swapped that picture for the next one.

  It was a photo of Lowell and LeSabre embracing outside a motel room door. It wasn't the kind of embrace a father gives a daughter. It was the kind of embrace Monette kept hoping Lowell would give her again one day. She felt her chest tightening up, and she flipped through the remaining photos so rapidly it was almost like frames of a film passing through a projector, the movie playing out in her hands. An X-rated movie. The remaining photos showed Lowell and LeSabre in bed.

  Monette flung the photos onto the passenger seat and grabbed the steering wheel for support.

  The bastard was cheating on her. With her daughter.

  It didn't matter that LeSabre wasn't his flesh and blood.

  It didn't matter that LeSabre was an adult now.

  LeSabre was his stepdaughter. The child he'd raised since she was twelve years old.

  Monette knew it wasn't her daughter's fault at all. LeSabre was a victim of a vile, perverted sicko who took advantage of her trust, her obedience, and her love.

  Lowell had ruined her sweet LeSabre's future. His despicable acts were something the girl would never forget. It would be with her every moment of her life.

  It was unforgivable. It was unbearable.

  Monette gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles were white.

  She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. She couldn't see.

  Monette felt as if she was being buried alive, deep in the cold, dark earth. She was being smothered. There was nothing she could do to save herself.

  And then, as quickly as all the panic had descended upon her, it disappeared leaving perfect clarity and calm.

  Monette didn't feel angry. She didn't feel hurt. She didn't feel anything. She didn't need to feel anymore. She was a creature of single purpose who existed now to do just one thing.

  The man on the gurney was in his early forties and looked pretty relaxed, considering his situation. He was bleeding from a deep gash on his forehead, a cut on his lip, and a scrape on his prominent chin. Both of his arms were obviously broken, tucked close to his chest and supported by crude cardboard splints made by the paramedics who wheeled him into the Community General emergency room. He wore a bloodstained aloha shirt, baggy shorts, and leather flip-flops. Judging by the tan lines on his face, he'd only recently started cutting his hair very short in a futile attempt to hide the sprinkle of gray and halt the eternal march of time.

  Dr. Mark Sloan, Community General's chief of internal medicine, had seen a hundred patients with injuries just like this during his four decades in medicine. He could guess what had happened.

  "Motorcycle accident?" Mark asked.

  The man shook his head. "I tripped over the handicapped ramp at McDonald's."

  "You're joking," Mark said and glanced incredulously at the paramedic, Nestor Cody, a seasoned fire department veteran who'd been wheeling patients into the ER for years.

  "It's true, Doc," Nestor said. "Mr. Copeland was walking out of the restaurant with his Happy Meal and tripped. He hit his head on the curb, but didn't lose consciousness. His elbows must have broken his fall—no pun intended."

  Mark turned back to the patient on the gurney. "I don't understand, Mr. Copeland. How could you possibly trip over a ramp? They're flat, with smooth edges. That's what makes them ramps."

  "Not this one," Copeland said. "It goes down the middle of the sidewalk, parallel to the curb, gradually declining towards the front of the building. You have to walk across it to get to the parking lot and I didn't see it."

  "It wasn't painted or anything?"

  "It is now," Copeland said. "With a pint of my blood."

  "That's very vivid," Mark said.

  The man shrugged and immediately winced at the pain. "I'm a writer."

  Mark glanced at Nestor. "Where's his child?"

  "What child?" Nestor asked.

  "The one he was buying the Happy Meal for," Mark said.

  "It was for me," Copeland said.

  "You seem a little old to be ordering from the kiddie menu," Mark said.

  "I collect the toys. I have a complete collection of McDonald's toys going back to 1967," Copeland said, and then a look of panic washed over his face. "Where's my Earthquake Kitty?"

  Nestor reached into his pocket and pulled out the toy, still in its plastic wrap. It was a chubby blue-plastic cat with a jet pack on her back. "Right here."

  Copeland sagged with relief. "Thank God. That's the hardest member of the Kitty Crew to find."

  Mark turned to the paramedics. "That's one Happy Meal that didn't do its job."

  "A Happy Meal of Doom," Copeland said.

  "Speaking of which, a Big Mac sounds pretty good right now." Nester looked at his partner. 'What do you say we go back and grab lunch?"

  Mark shook his head and motioned to Teresa Chingas, one of the youngest nurses in the ER. She was also the only person on staff at Community General Hospital who found Mark Sloan intimidating. No matter what he did to rty to put the woman at ease, it never worked.

  She hurried over to them. "Yes, Doctor?"

  "Teresa, please take Mr. Copeland in for X-rays and call Dr. Wiss down for an orthopedic consult," Mark said, making some notes on a chart and handing it to her.

  "Certainly, Dr. Sloan," she said. She took charge of the gurney from the paramedics and rolled it right over Mark's foot.

  He yelped in surprise. Teresa looked back at him, horrorstricken. "Oh my God, are you okay?"

  "I'm fine." Mark winced, hopping on one foot to one of the waiting room chairs. "Hardly felt a thing."

  "I am so sorry." She rushed over to him. "Can I get you some ice?"

  "You want me to take a look at that for you, Doe?" Nestor asked with a grin.

  "No, thanks," Mark said, sitting down and pulling off his tennis shoe.

  Nestor chuckled and headed back outside with his partner.

  "Hey," Copeland called from his gurney, "what about me?"

  Teresa looked back at him, as if noticing him for the first time.

  "He has a point, Teresa. You better get going." Mark tipped his head in the general direction of the radiology department. "I'll be fine."

  Teresa, her face red with shame, went back to the gurney and wheeled the patient away, careful to steer clear
of Mark's chair.

  Mark was about to take off his sock and examine his aching toes when Susan Hilliard called out to him from the nurses' station, where she stood at the emergency console, communicating with paramedics in the field.

  "Dr. Sloan," she said, "I need your help."

  Susan was as young as Teresa, but more confident, more skilled, and not the least bit intimidated by Mark or, he suspected, anyone else. Then again, even Teresa would be hard-pressed to be intimidated by a white-haired man in his sixties, hopping over to the nurses' station on one foot.

  "A guy was crossing an intersection when he was hit by a minivan. Paramedics are on the scene," she said. "The victim is male, approximately forty years old, unconscious, with negative vitals. He's in full arrest."

  The voice of one of the paramedics came over the speaker. "We're administering CPR, oh-two via ambu at one hundred percent, and an IV, five percent dextrose in lactated ringers wide open."

  Mark glanced at a monitor that showed the victim's EKG. The pattern of the man's heartbeat looked like a straight line drawn by a trembling hand.

  The patient was in v-fib. His heart was failing.

  Mark took the mike from Susan and gave the paramedics a quick series of orders. "Give him a hundred milligrams of lidocaine. Shock him. Four hundred-watt seconds."

  "Ten-four," the paramedics replied.

  Mark studied the EKG monitor to see if the drugs and cardioversion caused any change in the patient's condition. They didn't. He looked at Susan. "How far away are they?"

  "Five minutes," Susan said.

  Mark spoke into the mike again. "Continue CPR and bring him in." He turned to Susan. "Page Jesse, set up a major trauma room. Call X-ray and the lab. Get a crash cart ready and pulmonary down here so we can get some ABGs done stat."

  Susan hurried away to make the preparations.

  Mark continued giving instructions to the paramedics en route. As soon as he knew they were pulling into the parking lot, he left the nurses' station, hopped back to his seat, and put on his tennis shoe. He didn't think he'd broken any toes—not that there was much he could do about it besides taping the injured toe to the one next to it for support.