The Last Word Read online

  It was pure luck Mark hadn’t ended up like Corinne and that his bones weren’t being reused today to fill gaps in other people’s bones. He was a registered organ donor, too.

  “But with the bleeding and bruising throughout her brain tissue, there is nothing we can do,” he continued somberly. “Her brain is no longer functioning.”

  “You’re saying she’s dead,” Lurline said.

  “Her brain is dead,” Mark said. “Her body is still alive.”

  “Because you’ve got her hooked to machines,” she said.

  “She’s on a ventilator to keep her breathing,” Mark said. “And we have her on an IV to keep her hydrated and nourished.”

  Lurline sighed, gathering her thoughts before speaking, stabbing at her piece of pie with her fork.

  “We’ve got this three-foot-tall Santa Claus in the garage. We bring him into the living room every Christmas, dust off his red suit, and plug him in. This candle in his hand lights up and he looks around and says ‘Ho ho ho’ every couple of minutes. He used to play ‘Jingle Bells,’ too, but that part broke years ago.” Lurline finished her pie and licked the whipped cream off her lips. “Corinne never liked that Santa Claus much. I think she’d like being him even less. Unplug her.”

  “Are you aware that Corinne agreed to become an organ donor in the event of a situation like this?”

  “She didn’t think this would ever happen. She was just doing the politically correct thing.”

  “But she did it,” Mark said.

  “Why can’t you take her off the machines?”

  “We need to keep her alive until we are ready to remove her organs.”

  Lurline grimaced and ran her finger along the rim of her pie plate, wiping up the cream that remained. She licked her finger clean.

  “So you’re going to gut her like a fish,” Lurline said. “Remove her organs while she’s still alive.”

  Basically, Lurline was right. But Mark wasn’t going to say that. He put it as delicately as he could.

  “Her organs are healthy and we need to keep them that way until the last possible moment,” Mark said. “That means keeping her as physiologically functional as possible until surgery.”

  “You’ve turned her into a cocoon.”

  “Corinne is gone. Wherever it is we go in our afterlife, she’s already there. Now the body she has left behind can be used to save lives.”

  “But not her own,” Lurline said.

  “I’m sorry,” Mark said.

  “She went on a diet, kept herself in shape, even got herself some new boobies,” Lurline said. “And for what?”

  Mark thought about what Ramin Akhavan, the radiologist, had said about fate.

  “Maybe for this,” Mark said.

  “Screw this.” Lurline got up, went back to the cafeteria counter, and snagged another piece of pie.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Steve Sloan often spent his weekends wearing short-sleeved shirts and shorts, and he thought he looked pretty good in them. His body was muscular and tan from years of weightlifting, jogging, and surfing. He was built for casual attire.

  So it must have been some flaw in the design of the mud brown short-sleeve shirt and matching shorts of the United Parcel Service uniform he was wearing that made him look so awkward and pudgy. The uniform made him feel like an adult who still lived at home with his parents, which, of course, he was.

  But Steve wasn’t living with his dad because he was some socially inept loser afraid of leaving the nest. He had lived on his own for years. The only reason he’d moved back home, so to speak, was because his dad bought an incredible two-story beach house and invited Steve to share it. Steve loved the beach. He loved surfing. And there was no way he could ever afford to live on the beach in Malibu on a cop’s salary. It was too good an opportunity to pass up. That was all there was to it. Not that anyone in the department really believed that story.

  He was afraid that other cops saw him the way he felt when he put on the UPS uniform, which, for some bizarre reason, matched the color of the company delivery truck he was now driving through a neighborhood of tract homes in Simi Valley. Judging by the idiotic smirks on the faces of the six heavily armed SWAT guys and the one Latina detective in the back of the truck, Steve was right.

  “Nice knees,” Olivia said.

  “Thanks,” Steve muttered.

  “They really pop with the brown socks and loafers,” she said. “It’s a shame you aren’t wearing the UPS cap, too.”

  “I thought women love a man in uniform,” he said.

  “If the uniform makes him look like a man,” she said, her implication painfully clear to Steve.

  He turned the corner and headed into a cul-de-sac. It was nine a.m.

  “We’re moving into position,” he said.

  “Ten-four,” the SWAT commander radioed back.

  Teeg had called LaShonda from a landline. The police traced the phone to one of the cookie-cutter homes in this recently built neighborhood, which was inhabited almost exclusively by young middle-class families. There were SUVs, bicycles, and basketball hoops in the driveways. The lawns were all freshly laid mosaics of sod.

  It seemed like a strange place for Teeg to hide out, especially if he wanted to go unnoticed. Steve was surprised the cops weren’t called by every neighbor in the cul-de-sac the moment Teeg stepped out of his truck.

  It was probably a good thing they hadn’t called. If a black-and-white had driven up, Teeg was trigger-happy enough that he would’ve started firing the instant the cops got out of the car. And the guy’s aim wasn’t very good.

  With that in mind, the LAPD was approaching the apprehension of this particular felon with care. They couldn’t risk provoking a shoot-out in this cul-de-sac. The possibility of civilians getting hit by Teeg’s stray bullets was way too high. And the police didn’t think they could evacuate the neighbors or move large numbers of officers into offensive positions without tipping off the suspect and sparking a firefight.

  So they had to get clever.

  It was the SWAT commander who came up with the idea of dressing Steve as a UPS deliveryman and having him drive a van full of cops right into the suspect’s driveway. Then Steve was supposed to walk up to the front door and deliver a package.

  The front door of the house was set back far enough from the driveway that Teeg’s view of the truck would be obscured, especially with Steve standing in front of him. The plan was that team would scramble out of the front passenger side of the van, surround the house, and wait for the signal to strike.

  Steve’s job was to see whatever he could through the open door and report back if there were other people in the house. That was assuming that Teeg opened the door wide enough or that he even answered. The box Steve was delivering contained a tear-gas bomb that would explode in Teeg’s face when he opened it.

  That was the primary signal.

  If Teeg didn’t open the box, then the SWAT team would burst in on Steve’s command. One way or another, they were going in.

  Steve could see Teeg’s pickup parked in front of a single-story house with a red tile roof and a large, three-car garage at the front.

  He parked in the driveway on the side farthest from the front door. Teeg would be able to see the rear of the van, but not the front.

  So far, so good.

  Steve picked up the package, strode to the door, and leaned on the bell. He could hear it ring inside the house. It was a hollow sound, like the ring was bouncing around empty rooms. After a moment, he heard footsteps padding up to the door and saw a flicker behind the peephole. Someone was looking at him and seeing a harmless geek in goofy brown shorts.

  “What is it?” Teeg demanded.

  “UPS,” Steve said. “I have a delivery for you.”

  “Is it something good?”

  “I don’t open the boxes,” Steve said. “I just deliver them.”

  The door opened. Teeg was shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a pair of white Jockey short
s. He was a bald, light-skinned, African-American Hispanic with prison yard muscles. There was a tattoo on his hairless chest that the artist had probably intended to be a vicious cobra, but it looked to Steve like a tapeworm with bad teeth. Behind Teeg, Steve could see that the entry hall and the living room were vacant of furniture, artwork, and other people.

  So Steve handed Teeg the box and punched him in the face.

  Teeg staggered back, stunned by the blow.

  Steve stepped into the house and punched him again to keep him hospitable.

  “LAPD. You’re under arrest.”

  Steve took the box back from Teeg so he wouldn’t set off the tear gas bomb when he hit the floor.

  Teeg dropped.

  Steve watched Teeg crumple and heard the SWAT team members crashing into the house simultaneously through various doors and windows. The SWAT guys each shouted “clear” as they swept the rooms for occupants and found no one.

  The cops all converged in the entry hall around Teeg, who, when he was able to focus his eyes again, looked up into eight gun barrels pointed at his face.

  Steve rolled Teeg over on his stomach, yanked his arms behind his back, and handcuffed him while informing him of his rights. Outside, several black-and-whites drove into the cul-de-sac, and neighbors started coming out of their houses to see what was going on.

  He lifted Teeg to his feet and handed him off to the first officer who came through the door.

  Olivia came into the entry hall, holstering her gun. “I don’t think one of the signals we agreed on was smacking the guy in the face.”

  “The opportunity presented itself,” Steve said.

  “I feel sorry for the next UPS guy Teeg meets,” Olivia said.

  “I don’t think they deliver to death row,” Steve said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mark got home from the hospital at about two a.m. and went straight to bed. When he awoke shortly after nine a.m., Steve was already gone. The only sign that Mark and Steve had been in the same house that night were his son’s coffee cup in the sink and a butter knife left by the toaster.

  He made himself some coffee, poured a bowl of Wheat Chex, and sat down at the kitchen table, facing the beach.

  The Los Angeles Times was on the table, the front page dominated by a story analyzing the hotly contested mayoral race between Police Chief Masters and District Attorney Burnside. Mark couldn’t bring himself to read it. He didn’t care who won. The city would survive either one of them and so would he.

  There was also a story about the safeguards being implemented at area hospitals in the wake of the arrests of two nurses who’d been killing patients for years. Mark didn’t bother reading it. He’d lived it. It was his investigation that exposed them.

  And there was a story about sentences being handed down against the corrupt cops exposed by private eye Nick Stryker’s surveillance and subsequent blackmailing scheme.

  It seemed that Mark had a connection to every story on the front page except the labor unrest in France, the efforts in Southern California to eradicate mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus, and a human-interest feature on a man who wallpapered his apartment with cocktail napkins.

  Mark pushed the Times aside and glanced outside while he ate. Looking at his million-dollar view was a much less stressful way to start the day.

  It was a typically gray morning, the fog hanging thick over the beach, keeping it a good ten to twenty degrees cooler than the rest of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. By noon, most of the fog would burn off and the beach would be covered with people seeking relief from the three-digit temperatures by frolicking in the salt water and sewage of Santa Monica Bay.

  The waves were pretty to look at, but the days when Mark would stroll in the surf in anything but a HazMat suit and rubber boots were long gone. There were times when the stench of rotting seaweed, soaked in the raw affluent that poured into the bay, made Mark contemplate a life in the mountains instead.

  It wasn’t just the contaminated water that prompted him to think about making some changes in his life. It wasn’t that he was unhappy, but ever since the three days he’d spent in a coma, he’d been restless and uneasy. His encounter yesterday with Carter Sweeney had only made things worse.

  He felt like he was a prisoner of his past, like a TV series character experiencing variations of the same story, over and over again for hundreds of episodes, season after season, without anything really changing. It was only an illusion that his life was moving forward; in fact, he was simply running in place.

  While Mark was comatose, he’d dreamed his life from a different perspective. He was living in the same world, only everyone had changed in significant ways. He’d even married again.

  The strange thing was, once he regained consciousness, that restlessness and uneasiness he’d been feeling were much stronger. He found himself missing his imaginary life with Emily, his new wife.

  It was silly. He knew that. Emily wasn’t a real person. She merely symbolized an aspect of the murder he was trying to solve at the time. But he couldn’t help wondering if Emily was more than that, if she was his subconscious expressing his dissatisfaction with his life.

  Mark was in his mid-sixties. He could retire and still have a long life ahead of him. But then what would he do? How would he occupy his time? How would he keep his mind sharp? Could he walk away from a life devoted to medicine and homicide investigation? And even if he could, was that what he wanted?

  That was the real problem. He didn’t know what he wanted.

  Maybe he was just lonely.

  Wasn’t that really why he’d bought this house after his wife, Katherine, died, all those years ago, as a way to keep Steve from leaving him alone?

  No, he couldn’t possibly be that selfish or manipulative. It wasn’t in his character. It wasn’t who he was. Or who he thought he was anyway.

  Maybe the only change he needed in his life was to find a new woman to love. He hadn’t made much of an effort in that regard in the decades since Katherine died. Sure, he’d had some relationships, but the women all ended up moving on. They grew tired of competing with the hospital and the LAPD for his attention and losing.

  He couldn’t blame them for leaving him. He’d refused to change. Perhaps he always would.

  Mark glanced at his watch. It was time to go to the hospital—it always was when his thoughts started taking him down roads he’d rather not travel.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jesse was on his way to the ICU to check on Corinne Adams when Mark caught up with him in the hallway. The young surgeon looked terrible.

  “Have you slept at all since I last saw you?” Mark asked.

  “Susan and I managed to sneak into one of the new maternity suites for a couple of hours,” Jesse said and then winced with regret. “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”

  The maternity suites were part of a new initiative by Hollyworld International, the owners of the hospital, to lure upscale couples to Community General for their maternity needs.

  Hollyworld owned several amusement parks and resorts and brought that design expertise to the lushly appointed maternity suites, which looked like upscale hotel rooms and offered well-heeled couples the opportunity to, as the advertisements put it, “enjoy the birth of your child in a relaxing environment of unsurpassed comfort, luxury, and style for mother, father, and newborn.”

  The theory was that couples would check in to the maternity ward as if it were a Ritz-Carlton, staying a few days before and after the birth of their child for a “maternity vacation that you will enjoy so much, you’ll start thinking of having another child before you leave.”

  But few couples could afford the daily rates, which looked more like monthly mortgage payments. It was a poorly kept secret that the only couples taking advantage of the plush new suites were doctors and nurses sneaking away for a few intimate moments in the middle of their long, grueling shifts.

  “You need your sleep,” Mark said. “As long a
s you don’t nod off while you’re behind the wheel of a car or operating on a patient, why should I care where you get your rest?”

  “Because you’re an administrator here and we’re supposed to sleep alone on the hard, narrow cots in the doctors’ lounge,” Jesse said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Not with our wives in the comfy king-sized beds with the four-hundred-thread-count sheets and heavy comforters that they’ve got up in the maternity suites. Those rooms are a lot nicer than our apartment. It’s almost pointless to go home.”

  “Did you change the sheets?” Mark asked.

  “Of course we did.”

  Mark shrugged.

  “What matters to me is that you’re at the top of your game and providing the best possible care to our patients. You need to be rested and undistracted by problems in your personal life to do that. If sleeping with your wife in an empty maternity suite is what it takes to maintain that level of quality care, then so be it. No one is getting hurt. If anything, the patients and the hospital are benefiting.”

  “I like your enlightened attitude,” Jesse said.

  “The hospital doesn’t.”

  “So what else is new? Speaking of which, Clarke Trotter has been looking for you.”

  Mark made it a habit to avoid Trotter, the hospital’s legal counsel and hatchet man.

  Trotter did whatever he could to limit the hospital’s legal exposure in any given situation. But that was Trotter’s job, and Mark could respect that. What Mark couldn’t abide was Trotter’s unwillingness to factor the medical and human consequences of his actions into his decisions.

  “I’ll stay on the lookout for him,” Mark said. “Where do things stand with Corinne Adams?”

  Jesse stopped outside the doors to the ICU and turned towards Mark.

  “She’s stable. I’ve sent out her lab work to all the hospitals that have patients at the top of the various waiting lists for organs. They’re getting back to me with their tissue samples and lab results to match with the donor. I’d like to see the donor on the table by the end of the week.”