Diagnosis Murder 6 - The Dead Letter (15 page)

"You saw it, didn't you?"

"Professional curiosity," Steve said. "I wanted to see the guy they got to play me."

"How come you never told me about this?"

"The character's name was Lieutenant Stockton Stone, and he interrogated Vivian by having sex with her. They ended up running off together at the end," Steve said. "It wasn't the most flattering portrayal."

"I still may want to talk with her," Mark said. "Did you ever get Stryker's credit-card statement?"

"Yeah."

"When and where was his last purchase?"

"Four days ago at a gas station in Victorville," Steve said.

"Interesting," Mark said.

"Why?"

"Because his last call was to Sanford Pelz, a currency broker in Kingman, Arizona, which isn't far from Victorville," Mark said. "I've tried calling Pelz repeatedly and can't reach him. Maybe Stryker had the same experience."

"So what's your next step?"

Mark sighed. "I'll drive to Kingman to see Sanford Pelz. He may have been the last person to see Stryker alive."

"When are you going?"

"Right after dessert," Mark said.

"Why bother? We know what happened to Stryker. And you don't really believe that Cale is alive, do you?"

"Arturo Sandoval may have killed Stryker, but I need to know if an innocent man is on death row."

"Yankton is guilty, Dad. I should know, I put him there," Steve said. "If word gets out about what you're doing, the press will be all over it."

"I'll poke around discreetly." Mark said. "I'm curious about what Stryker was doing, but I promise I won't let my curiosity jeopardize your career."

"I want you to make me a promise, but that wasn't it, Steve said. "Here it is. If you think Yankton is innocent, I want you to forget that the dumb cop who put him away was your son. Do whatever is necessary to set him free."

Mark smiled at his son. He'd never been more proud of him. "I promise."

"Then you deserve a slice of pecan pie," Steve said. He signaled the waitress, who came over and took their order. After she left, Steve let out a deep breath. "Looks like Burn- side was right"

"About what?"

"I may need all the glory that comes from these Stryker file arrests more than he does," Steve said. "If you're right about Cale, they may be the only thing that can save my career."

The five-hour journey to Kingman, Arizona, was memorable only for how unmemorable it was, marked by seemingly interminable periods of crushing boredom, particularly along the Pearblossom Highway, a two-lane California road that cut across the empty desert scrub between Lancaster and Victorville.

It was so dull that people often dozed off at the wheel and drifted into oncoming traffic. But even if a driver managed to stay awake on this deceptively peaceful, straight stretch of desert highway, there were other dangers. Bored drivers in a hurry to put the dull road behind them, or perhaps just to quicken their deadening pulse, would attempt to pass the cars in front of them by speeding up in the westbound lane. They frequently miscalculated the speed they were traveling, the amount of open roadway they needed to pass the cars, and the time left until the oncoming tour bus smashed into them head-on.

The result was miles of highway shoulder lined with faded crosses and piles of dried flowers, makeshift memorials to the dead. It was why the highway was better known as Bloody Alley.

Mark Sloan managed to stay awake and alert, despite his many hours on the road, and reached Victorville without incident. He headed north on the interstate, which had the benefit of being wider and safer than Bloody Alley but wasn't any more interesting when it came to scenery.

At least there weren't crosses along the road here.

Before long, he came to the eastbound transition to Interstate 40, which replaced the famed Route 66, now fondly remembered by some as the Mother Road and by others as America's Main Street.

Most of Route 66 was either paved over in the sixties and seventies for new highways or bypassed entirely, leaving towns that once thrived on the cross-country traffic to decay into ruins not even worthy of mowing down for outlet malls. A few of those once prosperous towns managed to survive as out-of-the-way tourist traps, celebrated by road junkies in search of kitsch and motor-home retirees eager to relive the good old days.

The interstate ran right through Kingman. It's main attraction as a place to live was that no one else could imagine living there. It was far away from everything and offered neither natural beauty, historical interest, nor kitsch appeal. The town seemed to exist simply to service the basic needs of travelers who found themselves stuck midway between where they'd been and where they wanted to go. Presumably, some never left.

It was always a place meant to be passed by. Long before the advent of highways, Kingman had served as a way station for railroad travelers and, before that, probably for Indians on the move across the dry, brown Hualapai Valley.

The post-Route 66 architecture in Kingman was roadside basic with a blandness that transcended time, style, or place, buildings made to be forgotten even as you were looking at them.

They achieved their purpose.

Mark stopped at the post office where Sanford Pelz kept a box for his mail. The building was a sun-bleached gray that blended perfectly with the sidewalk, the parking lot, and the street to create one seamless block of dullness. The post office might have been built in 1950 or a week ago—it was impossible for Mark to tell, at least from a design standpoint.

No one except the postman was inside. He sat behind a chipped and yellowed Formica counter on a rickety stool that was strategically placed so it was in the crosscurrent of the office's three whirring fans.

The postman embodied the same blandness as the building he occupied. It was as if he'd been assembled at the same time out of the leftover building supplies. Maybe thirty or forty years old, he wore his pale pudginess like a soggy coat. The name tag pinned to the breast pocket of his fading postal uniform read: DWAYNE.

"Can I help you." Dwayne asked with an unbridled lack of enthusiasm.

"I'm Dr. Mark Sloan, chief of internal medicine at Community General Hospital in Los Angeles." Mark showed Dwayne his hospital identification.

"Uh-huh," Dwayne said. "Would you like to purchase some stamps today?"

"I'm here about one of my patients, Sanford Pelz," Mark said. "I understand he keeps a post office box here."

"Yep."

"Has he been in lately to pick up his mail?"

"Not for a few days," Dwayne said. "Hasn't even come in for this month's issue of
Bank Note Reporter
. It arrived yesterday."

Mark didn't like the sound of that. Pelz had stopped coming in for his mail around the same time Stryker was killed. The coincidence troubled him.

"I'm worried about him." That much was true, but what Mark said next certainly wasn't. "He missed an important appointment with me at the hospital and I haven't been able to reach him on the phone."

Dwayne gave him a blank look. "So you drove all the way up here from LA."

Obviously
. There was a reason this man was working in a post office in Kingman.

"Mr. Pelz is very sick. He needs immediate medical attention," Mark said. "Do you know where he lives."

"We aren't supposed to give out that information," Dwayne said. "It's private."

"I understand," Mark said. "But do you think I would have come all this way if it wasn't an emergency?"

"Rules are rules," Dwayne said.

"Which would you rather have on your conscience? The violation of his privacy or his death?"

Dwayne pondered that for a while. A long while.

"He lives in a trailer up in the Black Mountains," Dwayne said. "We don't have mail service up there."

"I'm not from around here," Mark said. "Do you think you could draw me a map?"

Dwayne sighed, as if drawing that map would be an extraordinarily strenuous undertaking involving hours of complex drafting and years of cartography experience. But after the sigh, he quickly drew a crude map on the back of a vacation-hold card and handed it to Mark.

"Thanks. I appreciate your help," Mark said, though he didn't think the map would be much help at all, not for someone who was unfamiliar with the area to start with. He would need something with more detail.

Mark got in his car and drove to a Chevron station he'd passed earlier on his way in from the interstate. He filled up his tank, then went inside the tiny convenience store to ask for a map to Oatman and some directions.

The gas station attendant was a stout woman with a ponytail face-lift, her hair pulled back so tight that her eyebrows became her bangs. Her name tag read: SHARONA.

Whoever made name tags in Kingman must be doing brisk business, Mark thought.

"Excuse me, do you know how to get to Sanford Pelz's place?"

"Sure," Sharona said. "Who are you?"

"Dr. Mark Sloan," he said. "Mr. Pelz is my patient. Do you know him?"

"Everybody does," Sharona said. "He's one of those people who expects the Trilateral Commission and the Secret World Government to take over the United States any day now."

Mark had thought the conspiracy theories about the Trilateral Commission, a secret body of business leaders who supposedly controlled world affairs, died with mood rings and Afros. Apparently he was wrong.

"You his shrink?" she asked.

"No, I'm his physician."

"Wishful thinking on my part. He lives up in the mountains between Sitgreaves Pass and Goldroad."

"So I've heard," Mark said. "What's Goldroad?"

"An old gold mining settlement. It's nothing but rocky ruins now," she said. "Are you planning to go out there?"

"If I can find my way," Mark said. "I'd appreciate some directions. The map I was given isn't too clear."

Sharona took out a map from a display behind her, spread it open on the counter, and showed him the way, a wiggly scribble up into the mountains to Oatman, a decaying old mining town that survived as a scrappy tourist trap. She marked the approximate point where he'd find the dirt road that led to Pelz's trailer. The only way to spot the road, she said, was to be on the lookout for the weed-covered footings of the long-since-demolished trading post.

"You be careful on Bloody 66, Doc," she said.

"Why's that?" Mark figured it was never a good sign when "bloody" was used to describe a road, but he didn't think it could be any more dangerous than the Pearblossom Highway and he'd survived that.

"It's fearsome," she said. "The ghosts of many a dead traveler wander in the shadows of those cliffs."

Sharona explained that the old road was part of Route 66 until 1953, when it was replaced by a new stretch of highway that avoided the mountains and that eventually became Interstate 40. But even in its heyday, the road into Oatman was a error.

The way she described it, the steady, arduous climb would be hard enough on driver and car alike, but as you neared the dark, brooding peaks, the road tried to trick you with one turn after another, each more deadly than the one before.

If you were fortunate, your car would simply die struggling up the grade and have to be towed the rest of the way by an experienced local. Many drivers counted their blessings when that happened. It meant they didn't have to drive the Bloody 66 themselves. Others simply hired someone in Kingman to take the wheel of their car from the get-go and guide them safely to Oatman or on to Toprock. The local would then turn around and guide travelers heading east over the pass.

"My uncle's uncle Cletus will drive you for thirty bucks," she said. "He's made that drive so many times he could do it with one eye shut, which is fortunate, 'cause he's only got one left"

"He only has one eye?"

"And only one testicle, but that's another story. Uncle Cletus lost the eye in a bar fight in '88. It got plucked out with a pool cue. Rolled across the floor like a marble, they say. He's got it in this pickle jar full of formaldehyde on his mantel. It's his security system. One time a robber broke in, saw that eye staring at him in the moonlight, and got spooked. He ran out side in such a hurry, he tripped over the porch step and broke his neck."

Mark was afraid to ask where Uncle Cletus kept his testicle.

"Well, thank you so much for the directions. I think I'll take my chances on the road myself."

"Say, Doc," she said, "could I ask you a little favor?" He figured he owed her something for her help and for sharing an anecdote with him that he'd be telling everyone as soon as he got home.

"Of course' Mark said.

She motioned another attendant to take her place at the register, slipped out from behind the counter, and led Mark towards the restrooms.

"It's about my hemorrhoids," she whispered. "It's got so I can read an entire Harlequin every time I visit the john, if you get my meaning."

Unfortunately, he did.

"Think you could take a look at it?" she asked.

Before Mark had a chance to answer, she grabbed a box of rubber gloves from a nearby shelf, shoved them in his hands, and opened the bathroom door, inviting him inside.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Mark wasn't too thrilled with the sights in Kingman, having viewed a natural wonder he wouldn't recommend to anyone as a tourist attraction.

After a careful and reluctant examination, he'd urged Sharona to visit a qualified proctologist right away for a hemorrhoidectomy.

She sighed wearily. "Guess I won't have much opportunity anymore for appreciating literature."

"There are other places you can read."

"Not with a husband and six kids," she said.

Mark left the gas station as fast as he could without looking as if he was running. He didn't want to be asked for any more favors.

He set out immediately for the Pelz place so that he'd get there before dark. After his talk with Pelz, he'd find a place to stay in Victorville and return home in the morning.

The narrow, crumbling road that crept up into the Black Mountains turned out to be every bit as treacherous as Sharona had made it seem. It twisted along the jagged hillside, with unexpected hairpin turns around blind corners over sheer cliffs. There were no guard rails, and the blinding glare of the sun in his face didn't help.