Diagnosis Murder 3 - The Shooting Script (28 page)

"Does the defense have any affirmative defenses?" the judge said, referring to pleas the defense might offer, such as insanity.

"No, Your Honor. I move for the immediate dismissal of all the charges against my clients," Tyrell said. "The integrity of the physical evidence presented by the People to support their charges is hopelessly tainted by the involvement of a civilian at every stage of the investigation. What evidence remains is circumstantial at best, and open to broad interpretation. By any legal measure, the People have not met the burden of proof necessary to create a reasonable basis for their charges. Therefore, I ask the court to dismiss the charges against my clients on the grounds of insufficient evidence."

Judge Rojas made a notation on some documents in front of him. "The defendants will rise."

Lacey McClure and Moira Cole stood up alongside their attorney.

"It appears to me from the evidence presented that there is insufficient cause to support the charges against Lacey McClure and Moira Cole," the judge said, leveling a cold gaze at Karen Cross. "The defense motion is granted. All charges are hereby dismissed. Ms. McClure, Ms. Cole, you are both free to go."

The slam of his gavel ricocheted through the courtroom like a gunshot. Lacey and Moira hugged each other. Tyrell beamed, looking directly into the camera and into a future that undoubtedly included a lavish home theater, a book deal, a guest shot on Letterman, and probably a television movie.

Mark, Steve, and Karen were looking at no future at all, at least not in their present professions. Lacey glanced over her shoulder and gave Mark a smile that said she knew all that and more. She'd beaten Mark at a game in which he was a master, and she was reveling in it.

"I don't believe it," Steve said to his father. "She's getting away with a double homicide."

"I won't let that happen," Mark said.

"It just has."

"This is only a preliminary hearing," Mark said. "Double jeopardy doesn't apply. She can be tried again."

"Not with any of this evidence," Steve said. "None of the evidence we've presented here will ever be accepted by a judge or jury. It's contaminated with reasonable doubt now."

"Then I'll find something else."

"There is nothing else. We've been beaten," Steve said. "And we're in for a lot more beatings before this is behind us."

"As long as she is free and unpunished for her crimes," Mark said, "this will never be behind us."

BBQ Bob's was closed for business that night. It was the only place the media wasn't staking out yet. Mark and Steve sat at the counter in the empty restaurant, with Jesse and Susan, watching the early-evening news on the wall- mounted television.

Chief Masters and District Attorney Burnside held a press conference, jointly condemning the actions of Lt. Steve Sloan, a "rogue officer" who violated department policy in his investigation of the murders of Cleve Kershaw and Amy Butler. They criticized him for allowing his father, a civilian, to handle evidence and participate in the questioning of suspects. Lt. Sloan's conduct, they said, "imperiled" justice and did not reflect "the high investigative standards" of the LAPD.

The chief apologized to Lacey McClure and Moira Cole, and promised the public, and the families of the victims, that justice would be done. He revealed that the department was already vigorously pursuing "compelling evidence" that "key figures in organized crime" were actually responsible for the killings.

Jesse aimed his remote at the TV and muted the sound. "What does this mean for you, Steve?"

Steve shrugged. "Suspension, an internal-affairs investigation, and then my firing, assuming I don't quit first."

"Will you?" Susan asked.

"I didn't do anything wrong," Steve said.

"They are going to push you out anyway," Jesse said. "Why put yourself through the ordeal of a drawn-out investigation when you know how it's going to end? If you quit, you save yourself a lot of misery and the media will stop dogging you."

"You're right, but I can't help feeling that by quitting, I'm tacitly admitting guilt." Steve glanced at his father. "For both of us."

"I am guilty, Steve," Mark said. "Not of planting evidence, but of sloppiness. We've never been involved in such a high-profile case. I should have paid a lot more attention to how my actions could be twisted and used against us in court. If I'd been more careful, Lacey McClure and Moira Cole would still be in jail."

"You weren't alone, Dad," Steve said. "I made the same mistakes, too. I was the homicide detective on the case. I'm solely responsible for blowing it."

"Give yourselves a break," Susan said. "You aren't psychics—you had no way of knowing exactly how this would play out. You did the best job you could, the only way you knew how."

"And let a killer walk free," Mark said.

"Think of all the other killers you've put away," Susan said. "I know it's a cliché, but you can't win them all. And until today, you've been on a thirty-year winning streak."

"But no one is going to remember that now," Steve said.

"The families of all the murder victims you found justice for will remember," Susan said. "And so will all the murderers spending their lives in prison because you two caught them when no one else could."

"You could write a book," Jesse said. "I'm sure the million-dollar offer is still on the table. It might even be higher now."

"What good would that do?" Steve asked.

"It would make you rich, for one thing, and give you some financial security," Jesse said. "And it would get your side of the story out."

"But Lacey McClure will still be free," Mark said.

Amanda knocked at the front window. Steve got up, unlocked the door, and let her in. She lumbered up to the counter and sat wearily on the stool beside Mark.

"The press is all over the hospital," she said. "They're parked outside my house, too."

"You went back to the hospital?" Mark asked.

She nodded. "Right after I testified. I had work to do. When I got there, I found the lab sealed. Dent told me the county was firing me. And so was he."

"Dent fired you?" Jesse said. "He can't do that."

"But the board can, citing my unprofessional and unethical conduct," she replied, handing Mark an envelope. "They've fired you, too. Forgive me for peeking."

Mark set the envelope aside without opening it. "You're forgiven."

"Dent must be celebrating tonight," Susan said.

"Looks like you're the only one who's still got a job," Amanda said to Jesse. "You may have to start supporting us."

"Dent will find a way to force me out, too. It's only a matter of time." Jesse glanced at the clock on the wall. "Speaking of time, I've got to get going."

"Early shift in the ER?" Mark asked.

"Late flight at LAX," Jesse said, untying his apron. "I'm taking the red-eye to a friend's wedding. I'll be back in a day or so, unless you'd like me to stay."

"Isn't that a question you should be asking Noah Dent or Steve?" Mark said. "You don't work for me. As far as I'm concerned, you can go anywhere you like whenever you like."

"I was thinking you might need me to do some snooping for you on Lacey McClure or Moira Cole."

"I appreciate that, Jesse," Mark said, genuinely touched by the young doctor's offer. "But there's far too much attention focused on her, and on us, for me to resume my investigation. The last thing I want is for you to get caught up in this scandal, too. Enough of the people close to me have been hurt as it is. So go, have a good time. Try not to think about all this."

"Then I guess I might try to get in a little fishing while I'm there," Jesse said and shared a look with Susan, who knew exactly what he was referring to. What she didn't understand was why he wasn't telling Mark the true reason for his trip. She would have asked him, but Jesse gave her a quick kiss and hurried out the door without pausing to give her the chance.

Amanda stared at Mark. "You can't be serious about going alter Lacey McClure again."

"She can't be allowed to go unpunished for her crimes, Amanda."

"But you can't be the one to go alter her," she said. "No one even remotely connected to the case will talk to you and the press will crucify you the instant they learn you're asking questions again."

"She's right, Dad," Steve said:

"If I don't pursue it," Mark said. "Who will?"

"The press is all over Lacey McClure now; a few of the reporters are bound to be digging," Steve said. "Maybe one of them will turn up some new evidence someday."

"And maybe not," Mark said.

"It's not your responsibility," Steve said. "It never was."

"I don't have a choice," Mark said. "I can't let it go. You know it's just going to keep eating at me until I set things right."

"Making this your cause could ruin you," Amanda said. "You could lose everything."

"Not as much as Cleve Kershaw and Amy Butler lost," Mark said.

Amanda knew there was no point in arguing with Mark about it. His mind was made up, and his course of action was set in stone, the moment he discovered the bodies.

There would be no stopping Mark now until Lacey McClure was in prison, even if it was a goal he couldn't possibly achieve.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a picture of herself on TV. She snatched the remote and turned up the volume on the television, just in time to hear Arthur Tyrell refer to her as "one of Dr. Sloan's ethically corrupt myrmidons."

She flicked off the TV in disgust and turned to Mark.

"There are five hundred channels on TV," she said, "And there's still nothing good on."

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Toronto was a city Jesse had seen a hundred times, only never as Toronto. He'd seen it posing as Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Washington, D.C., and Seattle in scores of TV shows and movies.

As long as cameras avoided capturing the CN Tower—the city's requisite Space Needle-inspired landmark—or the maple-leaf flags and banners in nearly every merchant's window, the place was virtually indistinguishable from any major American city.

What made Toronto so attractive to filmmakers wasn't its malleable sameness. It was the weakness of the Canadian dollar and tax benefits offered by the government to lure movies and TV shows over the border.

None of that meant anything to Jesse, of course, except that it explained the eerie feeling of familiarity he felt in the city, even though he'd never been there before. He was in a foreign country that didn't seem foreign at all.

The subliminal conditioning of cheap television shows and movies was far from the only reason Toronto felt familiar. As he made his way through the airport, rented his Camry, and drove into the city, he couldn't help but notice all the American cars. All the American stores. All the American restaurants. All the American-looking Canadians. And all the American news. The Lacey McClure case was as big a media event in Toronto as it was in LA.

Jesse headed east along the Gardener Expressway, a shoreline freeway that skirted the city center and took him to a residential neighborhood known as The Beaches. He found a parking spot on Queen Street, a strip of quirky store front shops and cafes almost entirely free of franchises and chain stores, then walked down to the beachfront to find the house the Dents lived in.

Because Jesse had been living in California for the last few years, and was an avid viewer of Baywatch, the name of the neighborhood immediately conjured comforting images in his mind of long stretches of golden sand, crashing surf, and bronzed women in bikinis sunning themselves.

But Jesse was thousands of miles northeast, where there was more than one season, where the skies were gray and the temperature was chilly. The only resemblance The Beaches in Toronto had to those in California were the big signs erected in the sand warning people to stay out of the toxic water. There was neither ocean nor waves, just the frigid, calm, and apparently filthy waters of Lake Ontario. The sand had the consistency and the crunch underfoot of fine gravel. A wooden boardwalk ran the length of the broad beach, drawing a line of separation between the sand and the green, tree-lined park that ran parallel to it.

Behind the park was a neighborhood of virtually identical, two-story duplexes, with big front porches under enormous decks. According to the guidebook Jesse bought at the airport, this was supposed to be a very desirable, and quite expensive, area to live in. And yet most of the homes, much to Jesse's surprise, had backyard barbecues strapped securely to the wooden railings of their decks, the propane tank and rubber wheels dangling over the front steps like mistletoe.

They were called backyard barbecues for a reason. Jesse couldn't understand why anyone would want to mount one on the front of their home. The barbecues were hardly stylish or pleasant to look at. He wondered if maybe the size and brand of one's barbeque was a status symbol in Canada, the way the make and model of a car parked in someone's drive way was in LA.

Jesse was still pondering the mystery of the hanging barbecues when a black squirrel darted across his path, startling him. It's not that he was afraid of squirrels, he'd just never seen a black one before. He knew that Mark had, but those poor creatures had been ablaze at the time, running out of the flames of the Malibu fire. Or were those bunnies? Jesse couldn't remember. Either way, it was a chilling image.

This squirrel wasn't on fire, and at first Jesse wasn't even sure if it was real. He thought maybe it was his imagination, which wasn't such a stretch. Jesse hadn't slept on the plane and it had left him feeling blurred. He was certain that if he saw his reflection, it would appear as an almost-double image, with his spirit-likeness floating just outside the boundaries of his physical body.

The blurred feeling didn't come simply from sleep deprivation and one too many glasses of cheap white wine during the five-hour flight. It was the unexpected and shockingly sudden destruction of Dr. Mark Sloan, a man he held in higher esteem than anybody else in his life.

No murderer, no lawyer, no hospital administrator, had ever outsmarted Mark before. Jesse never considered the possibility that such a thing could ever happen, and now that it had, his whole life felt unhinged. This was a big reason why he was in Toronto, desperate to restore order to his world by, at the very least, getting Mark his job back.