The Last Word Read online

  That was just the beginning of the nightmare for Mark Sloan.

  Caitlin joined the Revolutionary Order for Armed Rebellion, or ROAR, a white supremacist group, using them to hijack the bus that was taking her brother to prison. Together, Carter and Caitlin kidnapped Mark and forced him to help them steal a hundred million dollars from the Federal Reserve.

  But Mark outsmarted them once again. Now the Sweeneys were finally imprisoned, and Carter was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Like father, like son.

  “As much as I enjoy reliving your downfall,” Mark said, “I’m sure you didn’t invite me here to rehash your history of violence.”

  “I’m an innocent man,” Sweeney said.

  “Oh spare me,” Mark said.

  “I couldn’t possibly do that,” Sweeney said with a gleam in his eye. “I wanted you to hear the good news directly from me. I’ll be out of here in a few weeks.”

  “The only way you’re leaving prison is in a coffin,” Mark said. “All your appeals have been denied.”

  “Not all,” Sweeney said. “The court has granted my writ of habeas corpus. There’s going to be a hearing soon. I have a feeling it’s going to go very well. I might even be freed in time to cast my vote for mayor. But it’s such a difficult choice. Do I vote for John Masters, the police chief whose department unjustly arrested me? Or Neal Burnside, the district attorney who railroaded me into this hellhole?”

  “The evidence against you is overwhelming and irrefutable. No court will ever overturn your conviction,” Mark said. “But go ahead—enjoy your fantasy. I’m sure it makes the hours pass more swiftly in your cell.”

  “I won’t be the second innocent Sweeney wrongly put to death because of you.”

  “You’re wasting your act on me,” Mark said. “We both know the truth.”

  Sweeney broke into a broad grin. “Haven’t you heard? Clinton never had sex with that woman and Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. The truth doesn’t matter anymore. Truth is so last century. The new currency in our culture is perception. And everyone’s perception of me is about to change.”

  “Not mine,” Mark said.

  “I’m counting on that,” Sweeney said. “So tell me, Mark, how’s your health these days? I heard you took a nasty fall.”

  “I’ll live.”

  “That’s good, because I want you to enjoy a very long life.”

  “It’s too short to waste any more of it here with you,” Mark said. “Make your point.”

  “I already have. Weren’t you listening? Let’s have lunch when I get out. How do you feel about Chinese food?”

  “This is the last time we’ll be seeing each other.” Mark rose from his seat. “At least until your execution.”

  “Now that’s more like the Mark Sloan I know,” Sweeney said. “You never miss an opportunity to see someone die, do you?”

  Mark went to the door and pounded on it a little too urgently.

  “Guard, I’m ready to go.”

  “What’s your hurry? There are so many of your friends in here. You should really say hello to them before you leave. I know they’d love to see you.”

  “I’ll pass,” Mark said.

  The serial killer known as the Silent Partner was here. So was former councilman Matt Watson, psychiatrist Gavin Reed, Detective Harley Brule, Mob accountant Malcolm Trainor, and many others Mark had helped capture. He didn’t need to see how the years of incarceration had taken their toll on the minds and bodies of all those murderers.

  He took no pleasure in their suffering, even though they deserved it. His investigations weren’t about vengeance. They were about seeing that justice was served, but he’d come to accept the fact that that wasn’t his primary motivation. It was the chase. It was the intellectual challenge of the hunt, the methodical piecing together of the clues that led to the killer. That was what drove him.

  Mark never wanted to see the faces of the killers he’d caught again, not in the flesh or in his memory. And yet here he was, in a room with Carter Sweeney, the worst of them all.

  What was he thinking, coming here?

  Why was it taking so long for the damn door to open?

  “Think of all the vacancies they’d have in here if not for your diligence, Mark. They should really have named this prison in your honor,” Sweeney said. “Maybe they’re just waiting until you die.”

  Finally, Mark heard the electronic hiss of the locks opening automatically inside the thick steel door. A guard stepped in, eyed Sweeney warily, and escorted Mark out. The big door closed behind them, the locks sliding into place with a heavy, satisfying thunk.

  Carter Sweeney was chained in place behind a steel door. He couldn’t do Mark, or anybody else, any harm ever again. Even so, it took every ounce of self-control Mark possessed not to run all the way out of the prison.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mark was almost at the door of his car, which he had parked at the far end of the prison lot, when he was overwhelmed with nausea. He dashed to the nearest garbage can and vomited, heaving until his stomach was empty and his throat was raw, trying to purge the past hour from his life.

  He staggered to his Lexus SC 430, opened the door, and slumped into the driver’s seat, too light-headed at the moment to drive, too dazed to care about the burning sting of the sunbaked leather upholstery against his back.

  There was a bottle of water in the cup holder. He took a sip of hot water, swished it around in his mouth, and spit it out on the cracked asphalt. He watched the water evaporate almost instantly in the dry July heat and wished he’d never come here.

  When Sweeney’s lawyer had called yesterday to relay his client’s invitation, Mark had flatly refused to see the killer.

  That should have been the end of it.

  But it wasn’t.

  Mark couldn’t stop thinking about the call. What was Sweeney up to? Why did he want to talk to Mark?

  His curiosity about Sweeney was too strong to ignore, just as Sweeney had known it would be. Mark knew he was being manipulated, which only made it harder for him to decide whether or not to go.

  Which reaction was the one that Sweeney was expecting? Which one would play into his scheme, whatever it was?

  He found himself second-guessing every decision he had made and wondering if that, too, was part of Sweeney’s plan. He hadn’t even spoken with Sweeney again and already the killer was playing with his head.

  Mark thought about getting his son Steve’s advice, but he knew what it would be: Don’t go. Don’t give Sweeney the pleasure of toying with you again.

  Steve was the homicide detective who’d arrested Sweeney. He believed that once murderers were imprisoned, their existence was no longer worth acknowledging. They deserved no one’s care or attention. So he certainly wouldn’t have approved of Mark paying a visit to Sweeney.

  Mark considered getting an opinion from Dr. Amanda Bentley, the adjunct county medical examiner and Community General’s pathologist, but she’d nearly died in the hospital blast, and she wouldn’t approve of Mark’s consenting to any request from the man who’d almost killed her.

  The only one of Mark’s friends who might have told him to visit Sweeney was Dr. Jesse Travis, the young ER resident whose enthusiasm and curiosity often trumped his common sense and better judgment. In fact, Jesse would probably have insisted on tagging along with Mark.

  So, after a day of indecision, Mark decided it would be easier just to face his adversary and get it over with than to continue obsessing over what Sweeney might be up to.

  And now that the visit was over, Mark sat baking in his car outside the prison, a concrete island amidst a sea of cotton fields two hundred miles north of Los Angeles. He went over their conversation again, word for word. The exercise didn’t provoke any fresh insights, only another wave of nausea, which thankfully passed quickly.

  Mark was no closer to understanding Sweeney’s reasons for wanting to see him than he had been before the visit. But he was sure Sweeney hadn’t
summoned him merely to announce his latest legal maneuvering.

  So what message was Sweeney actually trying to convey?

  And why now?

  He told himself to let it go; the answers didn’t matter anyway. Unlike Carter Sweeney, Mark still had a life to live.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Corinne Adams did everything she could to ensure that she would have a long, healthy life. The blond-haired twenty-four-year-old didn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs. She was even reluctant to take Advil for a headache, preferring massage, meditation, or a bracing cup of herbal tea as a way of relieving her pain.

  She ran for thirty minutes each day on her treadmill, which was strategically placed in front of the TV in her one-bedroom apartment. She watched House Hunters while she exercised, dreaming of what she would buy when she finally sold one of her screenplays and gave up secretarial work forever.

  She was a vegetarian and brushed her teeth after every low-cal, low-fat, organic meal. She was the thinnest, healthiest member of her obese family, none of whom had ever stood on a scale and seen the needle point to anything below two hundred pounds.

  One night four years ago, when Corinne still lived at home in Woodland Hills, the whole family went out to dinner at Home Sweet Home Buffet. It was seafood night. Her mother, Noreen, was going back for thirds when she dropped dead of a massive heart attack. The other diners paused, confused, in their lemming-like march to the fried shrimp, until management stepped in and ushered everyone to the opposite side of the restaurant.

  The tragedy at Home Sweet Home Buffet had a profound effect on Corinne. She moved out of the house, went on a strict diet, began exercising regularly, and earnestly pursued her dream of becoming a screenwriter. All of her scripts, regardless of their plots, were titled “Home Sweet Home Buffet,” which made it difficult, even for her, to tell her screenplays apart without reading the first few pages.

  The scripts, which were either family dramas or romantic comedies, had nothing to do with her mother’s death. Corinne just thought “Home Sweet Home Buffet” sounded clever, and she liked all the meanings that could be read into the title.

  She’d written all of her screenplays with Reese Witherspoon, Julia Roberts, or Sandra Bullock in mind, because they played characters who were just like her: spunky, adorable, independent, and desirable.

  A big part of her desirability came from her new breasts. She’d had to work three jobs for two years to save up enough to get them. It wasn’t an issue of vanity, but rather a matter of basic survival. In LA, having a nice rack meant she would get better jobs, better pay, better health benefits, and better men.

  But so far the only men she seemed to date were her miserable screenwriting instructors at UCLA’s extension school. They were hack writers who never got the money or recognition they knew they deserved, so now, for a measly $1,500 a quarter and a healthy serving of irony, they taught other people how to compete against them. Corinne couldn’t help wondering if her instructors were taking her money and intentionally sabotaging her scripts with bad advice.

  Even so, that didn’t stop her from sleeping with her instructors, who, in the absence of recent screen credits, measured their self-worth by how many students they could seduce.

  She didn’t mind that. The part she didn’t like was sitting in the classroom with nineteen other wannabes, their desperation to break into the Industry as palpable as body odor. Ben Bovian, the instructor on this particular night, was no less desperate, though his aspirations were focused on breaking into Corinne’s pants.

  That wasn’t going to happen, partly because Corinne was bored with his fumbling foreplay, which consisted of sticking his tongue in her ear while they watched his unforgettable episodes of Sue Thomas F.B.Eye, and his postcoital whining six minutes later about all the less talented, but more successful, screenwriters who were getting all the work.

  But mostly Ben wouldn’t be going to bed with her tonight because Corinne would never sleep with anyone again, though she didn’t know that at the time.

  The first hour of class was spent giving notes to Jeremy Glatz, a thirty-four-year-old travel agent, on his 257-page, handwritten, epic screenplay about a thirty-four-year-old travel agent who was irresistible to women.

  Ben went through the atrocious script page by page, commenting in detail on lame lines of description and inept dialogue. It was an excruciating and pointless exercise, Corinne thought. The most constructive advice Ben could give Jeremy would be to chuck the whole screenplay into the trash and give up the idea of ever becoming a writer.

  By the time the ten-minute break came around, Corinne was so eager to escape Jeremy’s horrendous writing and Ben’s hungry glances that she bolted out of the third-floor classroom and rushed down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  That was a mistake.

  She missed a step on the second flight and went tumbling down the stairs with a shriek, banging off the steps, the walls, and the handrails until she finally landed headfirst on the linoleum floor of the lobby with a sickening, bone-cracking smack.

  But she didn’t hear it.

  She didn’t feel it either.

  She was past hearing or feeling anything ever again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was a slow night in the emergency room at Community General Hospital. Dr. Jesse Travis sat in the waiting room, his feet on a coffee table, watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy and eating a bag of Cheetos. His wife, Susan, an ER nurse, sat next to him, her head on his shoulder.

  Jesse liked the weight of her, the pressure of her, the warmth of her against him. He couldn’t imagine how he could ever survive without it. And he didn’t think he was just romanticizing his need for her. He’d read about studies done on monkeys that died, despite terrific diets and comfortable environments, because they were deprived of the “contact comfort” of other monkeys.

  A full bag of Cheetos and a big-screen TV weren’t enough for him anymore. He needed Susan, too.

  He’d become one of those monkeys.

  He was a love monkey.

  Jesse was about to tell Susan what he was thinking, but then he thought better of it. He had a feeling that telling Susan that he realized they were just like monkeys wouldn’t strike her as the most romantic thing he’d ever said.

  He and Susan were newlyweds and spent most of their waking hours at the hospital. Home was just the place where they slept, showered, and changed clothes. So the ER waiting room had become their family room, one they reluctantly shared with the general public and, on occasion, a few homeless people seeking shelter from the elements.

  Jesse gestured to the TV. “This is a show about the worst doctors in America.”

  “But that Dr. McDreamy guy is cute,” Susan said.

  “Every one of those oversexed doctors is guilty of malpractice, unethical behavior, and unbelievable stupidity.”

  “But they’re cute,” Susan said.

  “So nothing else matters.”

  “It’s television, Jesse.”

  “Tens of millions of people watch this show,” Jesse said. “They think that’s how doctors are supposed to behave. No real doctor could make the mistakes that they do on a consistent basis and still be allowed to practice medicine.”

  “Real doctors aren’t nearly as entertaining,” she said. “Or cute.”

  “What about me?”

  “I married you, didn’t I?” she said.

  “That’s not an answer,” Jesse said.

  She kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll just have to live with it.”

  “The patients would be better off operating on themselves with garden tools,” Jesse said. “That hospital is a death trap.”

  “Full of cuties,” she added.

  “I had no idea you were so superficial,” Jesse said.

  “I thought that’s what attracted you to me,” Susan said.

  “No, it was your body,” Jesse said.

  “At least you’re not superficial,” Susan said.

&nb
sp; “I’ve got so much depth that people have been known to fall to their deaths just looking into my eyes.”

  “I can vouch for that,” Susan said.

  An ambulance pulled up outside. Jesse and Susan got up, put on surgical gloves, and met the paramedics as they came in, wheeling their bloody patient on a gurney.

  The paramedics were two stocky men who looked like they needed to catch up on sleep. One of them was pumping an Ambu bag to keep the patient breathing. The other paramedic gave Jesse the rundown on their patient, who had a cervical collar around her neck, a cardboard splint around her left wrist, and an IV line in her right arm.

  “The victim’s name is Corinne Adams, age twenty-four. She took a header down a staircase,” the paramedic said. “And I mean a header. Cracked her skull open like an egg. She’s also got a broken wrist. She’s not breathing on her own. Her blood pressure is one hundred over fifty, pulse one-twenty-five, her sats are ninety-five percent on four liters. We started an IV of D-five with lactated ringers.”

  Jesse lifted her eyelids and shined a light in both of her eyes. Her pupils were wide open, big and black. It was like staring into the eyes of a Barbie doll.

  It wasn’t a good sign.

  “Let’s get her into trauma one,” Jesse said, leading the way. “Anyone contact her family?”

  “The police are on it,” the paramedic said.

  They wheeled her into the trauma room. Jesse, Susan, and the paramedics lifted Corinne onto the table and transferred her IV bag to a stand. Several more nurses spilled into the room. They started getting the things that they knew from experience Jesse was going to ask for. Susan took over pumping the Ambu bag to keep Corinne Adams breathing.

  Jesse listened to Corinne’s heart and lungs, which she’d worked so hard to keep healthy and strong. They hadn’t failed her now. She had good heart and breath sounds. The organs were working.