Diagnosis Murder: The Death Merchant (25 page)

He used the time in the car to study the recipe card, trying to figure out where in it Jason Brennan was hiding. The key to finding the fugitive was there somewhere, just as it had been for Stuart Appleby, Diane Love, and William Gregson. But as hard as Mark tried, he just didn't see it.

Shortly after nightfall, when the temperature finally dropped below three figures and Mark was reasonably comfortable for the first time, his cell phone trilled.

"Mark Sloan," he answered.

"Bart Feldman here," said the tired voice on the other end of the line. "I went up to Keystone, got the book, and ran the prints. It must not be a very popular title."

"Why do you say that?"

"Not that many unique prints on it," Feldman said.

"Were you able to match any of them?"

"We got yours, we got the bookseller's, and the guy you were talking to," Feldman said. "I got his picture here, and he's definitely the same guy in the Hawaii shots you sent me."

Mark felt his pulse quicken. "Who is he?"

"Raymond Wyatt," Feldman said. "Did some time in the military, mostly overseas doing covert wetwork for Special Forces. When he got out, he joined the Baltimore PD and rose up to the Major Crimes Unit, Special Investigations Division."

"He's a cop?" Mark asked incredulously.

"Used to be," Feldman said. "He quit about eight years ago, right after a big case he'd put together against some pedophile fell apart. The bad guy walked, and so did Wyatt."

"Where is Wyatt now?"

"Nobody knows," Feldman said. "Wyatt disappeared. Here's an interesting tidbit, though. The pedophile got himself killed a few months later. Fell asleep in his recliner, smoking a cigarette. His whole house burned down."

Feldman had more to say: that Wyatt was a decorated soldier but had been disciplined at the Baltimore PD for violating the civil rights of suspects and for using excessive force, though no formal charges were ever filed against him. He described Wyatt as an expert in hand-to-hand combat, firearms, electronic surveillance, interrogation, and undercover work.

There were more details, which Mark eventually wanted to hear, but he already knew what was important. He was beginning to get a sense of the man and, perhaps, the ethical code that drove him.

* * *

It was a great life, and Jerry Bodie hated to leave it behind, but it was better than having his ass fed to sharks.

Maybe in his next life he'd try being an actor, because he'd given an Oscar-caliber performance for the doctor and the Indian cop. When the doctor said Stuart and Diane were dead, it was all he could do not to start shaking. But he'd done it. He'd taken command of himself and overcome, as he would now.

He was lying naked in bed beside Cloris, listening to her breathing, waiting to be absolutely sure the sleeping pills he'd ground into her dinner had taken hold. The last thing he wanted was for her to wake up in middle of his escape. He'd miss her and her limber young body, though not as much as he'd miss his horses and his miniature trains.

Jerry got up and quickly got dressed. He didn't bother packing anything; the only essentials he needed were the overseas bank account numbers in his head, the false passports in his pockets, and the $50,000 in the money belt around his waist.

He'd sneak into the stable, hitch up one of the horses, and ride out the back into the Bosque, following it into the city unnoticed. In an hour or two, he'd leave his horse grazing in somebody's field, walk to a street, and phone a cab from a convenience store. Then he'd take a bus over the border, and then figure out where to go from there while enjoying a margarita and a nice rib eye steak.

By the time the cops or Standiford's hired gun showed up, he'd be long gone, starting his third life somewhere really different. France maybe. Or Australia.

In a way, it was kind of exciting. A year from now, he'd be living somewhere else with a new life, a new name, and new face. It was like a gift. How many people ever got the opportunity to start over, as if they'd never existed, and to do it without going broke first?

He was getting too fat and comfortable as Jerry Bodie, anyway. It was time to move on. He chose to look at this as a much-needed and welcome wake-up call. He'd let his guard down and nearly paid the ultimate price for it.

Jerry peered out the back door. It was pitch black outside, darker even than the night Roger Standiford went into the desert with his bags full of money. He took a deep breath and smiled. The air felt charged with excitement and possibility, just as it had five years ago.

He crept to the stable and slipped inside. The two horses, Enterprise and Voyager, stirred gently in their stalls. Jerry took a step toward Enterprise and was suddenly pulled backward, a muscular arm tight across his throat, a big hand clamped on his jaw, someone's warm breath in his ear.

"Roger Standiford sends his regards," a voice whispered.

Jerry whimpered pleadingly. "It was an accident."

"This isn't," Wyatt said and neatly broke Jerry's neck. He released his hold and let the body drop to the hay-strewn floor.

Wyatt stood for a moment, collecting his thoughts, formulating his plan.

He knew Mark Sloan was just a few yards away, sitting in his rental car. It would be so easy to kill him, if Wyatt was that sort of man. But he wasn't, and killing the doctor wouldn't do much good now, anyway. The damage was done.

Wyatt had been high up in the trees, watching the house and Mark with infrared binoculars, when he intercepted the cell phone call from Agent Feldman. Wyatt was astonished to learn how sloppy he'd been in Hawaii, and how stupid and careless in Colorado, and how quickly it had cost him his anonymity. Now he'd have to go to ground the way his prey did, maybe even resort to plastic surgery himself.

He'd always known his life as Raymond Wyatt was over, but he'd never reconciled himself to the possibility that he'd become as hunted as the men he pursued. He certainly never thought he'd be unmasked by an amateur like Dr. Mark Sloan.

Wyatt realized now that he'd let his huge advantage over the doctor lull him into dangerous complacency. His ego had emerged and he'd indulged it. It was ego that compelled him to talk with the doctor in Keystone, to step out of the safety of the shadows. He never should have given in to that temptation. It had cost him dearly.

Now that he'd identified his own critical weakness, his inflated ego, he'd examine it and adjust his future behavior accordingly. He wouldn't make the same mistake again. If anything, the revelation of his own incompetence would become a psychological asset. He would remind himself of his failures every day. That should keep his ego in check.

But there was no time for regrets, only action, now. He had to erase any possible clues he'd left behind, and let Jason Brennan know, wherever he was, that his days of freedom, of simply breathing, would soon be over.

The first thing Mark noticed were the horses trotting out of the stable into the ring. He sat up in his seat and saw tongues of fire licking out of the stable doors.

Mark immediately started the ignition, shifted the car into reverse and, looking over his shoulder, floored the gas pedal. The car shot backward across the street, peeling rubber, and smashed through the white picket fence that surrounded Jerry Bodie's property. He shifted the car into drive and sped right up to the stable, which was already engulfed in flames.

He jumped out of the car. The back door of the stable was open and he could see a body on the floor, in the calm center of the firestorm. It was Jerry Bodie.

Mark took a deep breath, bent over, and dashed into the stable, which had become a swirling tunnel of fire. The air was heavy with the intense heat. It was like running through superheated Jell-O. He grabbed Jerry under the arms and dragged him out, but it was obvious to Mark that he was rescuing a corpse. Jerry's neck hung too loosely from his shoulders, his eyes open and unseeing, his face a death mask forever capturing his last seconds of terror.

He dragged Bodie's body to the car, a safe distance from the inferno, then grabbed his cell phone and dialed 911.

Mark reported the fire and the murder to the operator, then realized, as he saw the flames lapping against the house, he hadn't seen Cloris leave. She was still inside. He tossed the cell phone into the car and ran into the house.

"Cloris!" he yelled as soon as he entered, but there was no response. Already smoke was beginning to fill the house and he could see the fire against the windows.

He hurried up the stairs to the master bedroom. Cloris was naked, sleeping deeply, in the large bed. Mark nudged her hard, shouting her name, but she barely stirred. So he yanked off her sheets, sat her upright, and shook her.

"Wake up," he shouted.

Her eyes fluttered open, and then widened in surprise when she saw Mark staring her in the face.

Mark yanked her to her feet. "The house is on fire—you have to get out of here."

She looked back to the bed for Jerry.

"He's gone," Mark wrapped a bathrobe loosely around her and steered the dazed woman out of the room.

Once she was in the smoke-filled hallway and saw the fire lashing against the windows, her head instantly cleared. Cloris charged past Mark and ran screaming out of the house ahead of him. She flung open the front door and bolted into the night, her untied bathrobe flaring out behind her like wings.

Mark emerged from the house a few moments later, coughing hard, just as the fire trucks, paramedics, and police cars came screaming up the street, sirens wailing.

The blazing stable collapsed into an enormous campfire, smoke and embers spiraling up into the night sky in a thick plume. The next instant fire spit out of the top-floor windows of the house. By morning, William Gregson's existence on the earth would be cleansed by fire.

Mark glanced at Cloris, hunched sobbing over the body of her dead lover, then he shifted his gaze beyond the fire to the darkness of the Bosque. The dense forest was cold and implacable, like the man it hid.

Wyatt was in there somewhere, watching. Mark could feel it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Mark didn't wait for Terry Riordan to arrive from Las Vegas and execute his wrath. He gave a detailed statement to Norman Begay, filled out reams of insurance papers at the rental-car agency, and flew out of Albuquerque as fast as he could.

It looked like the cowardly act of a defeated man, running away in shame, unwilling to face the consequences of his failure.

That's exactly the way Mark wanted it to look.

Terry Riordan would believe it and so would Wyatt. They would believe it because it was pretty close to the truth.

He
had
been defeated. And he didn't want to face the fury of the FBI just yet. But he wasn't ashamed and he certainly wasn't giving up.

Mark was far too angry to quit now. He'd been bested too many times by Wyatt. It was as if the hit man knew Mark better than he knew himself. He seemed to know what Mark was thinking before Mark was thinking it. And as a result, Diane Love and William Gregson were dead.

Of course, Wyatt had several advantages he didn't. Wyatt had five years to study and track the kidnappers. And unlike Mark, he knew all about his pursuer. If Wyatt wasn't aware of him in Hawaii, he was after Mark's meeting with Roger Standiford. Learning all about Mark would have been simple. There was plenty of information about him, going back decades, in the public record. There were countless newspaper articles and trial transcripts that detailed the cases he'd solved and the methods he'd used to do it. Wyatt would have studied those, as Mark would have studied Wyatt's past had he known who the hit man was earlier.

Intellectually, Mark knew and accepted all of that. And yet emotionally, it didn't matter. He was furious with himself for not being smarter and faster than his opponent. It was as if Wyatt was feeding off Mark's progress, rising to the challenge of an adversary.

Mark knew the feeling and understood its power, because it was driving him, too. It had been driving him ever since he'd discovered the shark attack was a murder and he'd felt presence of the killer lurking in the shadows.

No, that was a lie.

It didn't begin for Mark Sloan then. It began a long, long time ago. Deep down, Mark knew he didn't solve murders to see the guilty get punished for their crimes or for the intellectual challenge of solving a complex puzzle. What always compelled him, what kept him going without sleep for days on end, was the thrill of the hunt, the pure adrenaline rush of the chase. It was a drug, and he was an addict.

In that way, Mark probably wasn't so different from Wyatt. From what little Mark knew about Wyatt, he was sure the man also believed he was motivated by a desire to see justice done. It would explain Wyatt's ethical code, his unwillingness to kill innocent bystanders and potential witnesses.

But that's where the similarities between the two men ended. Mark worked within the law, Wyatt outside it. Mark apprehended criminals, Wyatt killed them.

It was those differences that Mark Sloan couldn't abide and why he would continue to pursue Wyatt no matter what happened to Jason Brennan.

Or was it more personal than that? Was it anger at being consistently outsmarted?

Perhaps Wyatt didn't really know Mark at all. Perhaps he'd tracked Diane Love and William Gregson based on in formation he'd found at Stuart Appleby's home in Kauai. Maybe Wyatt hadn't outsmarted Mark; it just appeared that way. Maybe all this time Mark was simply catching up to Wyatt, only not quite fast enough.

Regardless of which explanation was true, Wyatt was definitely feeling the pressure, too. It showed in his work. The hit man was killing quickly and brutally now, without the detailed planning and careful execution he'd displayed in Stuart Appleby's murder. He hadn't bothered to make William Gregson's death look accidental. Wyatt knew there was no point anymore, that his time to act was running out.

And Mark was the reason why. Knowing that, and accepting it, suddenly made Mark feel better.

This was the endgame now, and Mark was determined to win. He was convinced that the key to second-guessing his adversary was right in front of him, like the anagram that hid Jason Brennan's identity, he just couldn't see it yet.