The Last Word (2 page)

 

 

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eISBN : 978-1-101-01081-5

To Dick Van Dyke,
the one and only Dr. Mark Sloan

I would like to thank my wife, Valerie, and my daughter, Madison, for their love and support during the long days and nights it took me to write this book. I thought I’d never finish it and I know that they did, too. I’m also grateful to Dr. D. P. Lyle, Diane Stavroulakis, Robin Burcell, Paul Bishop, Karen Dinino, Joel Goldman, Colleen Casey, and Peter Keane for their advice and wise counsel. Whatever medical or legal errors I’ve made or creative liberties that I’ve taken are entirely my own.

 

The story you are about to read picks up characters and events from my previous books in this series as well as the
Diagnosis Murder
episodes “Retribution,” “Obsession,” and “Resurrection,” which I cowrote with William Rabkin, with whom I produced the TV series.

 

Fair warning: If you haven’t read the previous
Diagnosis Murder
books, you might want to set this one down until you have, because I spoil some of the surprise endings in this novel.

 

I’ve been associated with
Diagnosis Murder
, on-screen and in print, for well over a decade and it has been one of the highlights of my career as both a TV writer and a novelist. I’ve enjoyed every minute that I’ve spent with Dr. Mark Sloan, and I hope that you have, too. Let me know at
www.diagnosis-murder.com
.

Carter Sweeney was a pale, slight man with a receding hairline and a meticulously groomed goatee. He wore a loose-fitting bright orange jumpsuit and sat in a stiff-backed stainless-steel chair. His wrists and ankles were in irons, which were looped around his waist and strung through an eyebolt in the concrete floor.

Despite these restrictions, Sweeney seemed completely relaxed, as if he were lounging on a beach instead of sitting in the chilly, sterile visitation room at Sunrise Valley State Prison, home to extremely violent offenders. That’s because the visitation room was a luxury suite compared to solitary confinement in his twelve-by-seven-foot cell, where his bed, writing shelf, and stool were all made of poured concrete.

During his first year at Sunrise Valley, he was allowed outdoors for only one hour each day, by himself, in a concrete cavern known as the Dog Run. After three years of incarceration, he was allowed three hours per day in the Dog Run with two other prisoners. With continued good behavior, that was the most sunlight and social interaction he could expect to enjoy until his execution.

So the opportunity to spend time in the visitation room with someone from the outside world was truly an experience to be savored for as long as possible. Unfortunately for Sweeney, his reluctant guest didn’t share his eagerness to prolong the visit.

“You don’t call. You don’t write. I was beginning to wonder if you still cared about me,” Sweeney said in the smooth, calming voice that had made him a Los Angeles talk radio star at one time.

Dr. Mark Sloan sat across from Sweeney in a stainless steel chair that felt like it had been carved from a block of solid ice. He was shivering from the cold, but he couldn’t let Sweeney see it. Sweeney would interpret the shaking as fear and use it as a psychological weapon against him.

Mark knew it would be foolhardy to underestimate Sweeney simply because he was chained and imprisoned. Sweeney was the most dangerous man Mark had encountered in his forty years as a homicide consultant to the LAPD.

It wasn’t that Sweeney was a violent man, at least not physically. As far as Mark knew, Sweeney had never hurt anyone with his bare hands. His preferred method of killing was an explosive encased in an ornately crafted, hand-carved wooden box. Sweeney and his younger sister, Caitlin, had learned their bomb-making and wood-carving skills from their father, Regan, a furniture maker who set off bombs all over Los Angeles after his store was condemned by the city to build a new freeway.

But Carter Sweeney’s true weapon was his mind, which Mark was sure the years of near-solitary confinement hadn’t broken. He was a brilliant analytical thinker, with the frightening ability to manipulate others into doing exactly what he wanted, often without them ever being aware of it.

“I didn’t come here to play games with you,” Mark said, despite knowing full well that he was deluding himself. Simply by showing up, he was already playing whatever game Sweeney had begun.

“Of course not,” Sweeney said. “We both know how much you dislike games—unless there’s a corpse involved.”

“You kill people,” Mark said. “I don’t.”

“So that must have been a different Dr. Mark Sloan I read about a few months ago,” Sweeney said. “
That
Mark Sloan gunned down a woman in his own home.”

“It was self-defense,” Mark said. “Not premeditated murder.”

For an instant, that horrible moment played out in front of Mark’s eyes again. He was in bed, helpless, recovering from a head injury. She was going to smother him with a pillow. He had to shoot. But the first shot didn’t stop her.
She just kept coming—

He blinked hard, willing the image away, but he knew it was a temporary reprieve. The memory of that blood-soaked night would haunt him for the rest of his life.

“But you knew she would show up,” Sweeney said. “If you didn’t intend to kill her, why were you waiting for her with a loaded gun?”

“I tried to reason with her,” Mark said. “I didn’t want her to die.”

“Sure you didn’t.” Sweeney winked at him.

So was
that
what this visit was about? Mark wondered. Did Sweeney want to revel in Mark’s deadly misfortune? If that was it, Mark wasn’t going to play along.

“You’re in no position to judge me or anybody else,” Mark said. “You’re a mass murderer. You blew up a hospital, maiming and killing dozens of innocent people.”

“Come now, Mark. You know I didn’t do that. My poor, disturbed sister, Caitlin, planted those bombs. You saw her there yourself, right before the hospital fell on top of you.”

“She was acting on your orders,” Mark said. “You wanted revenge against me for sending your father here.”

“You killed him.”

“I
caught
him,” Mark said. “The State of California executed him.”

Within days of Regan Sweeney’s execution, Carter Sweeney embarked on a copycat bombing campaign to make it appear that Mark had framed an innocent man. Sweeney also used his popular radio program to expertly turn public opinion against Mark, the LAPD, and the district attorney’s office. But Carter ultimately failed, undone by his own arrogance, which Mark used to trick him into incriminating himself in the bombings.

But Mark didn’t know that Carter’s sister was also involved in the plot. She remained free and blew up Community General Hospital, trapping Mark, his son, and many of his closest friends in the flaming rubble.

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.

“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.

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.