Diagnosis Murder: The Death Merchant (27 page)

Mark knew there was no point arguing with the man. He turned his back on Wyatt and walked away.

The moment Wyatt was alone, he calmly put the gun to his head and squeezed the trigger.

Mark didn't even hear the shot.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

"Wyatt is dead," Mark said.

He sat in one of the uncomfortable seats in Roger Standiford's grandiose office. It was two days after the incident in Palm Springs.

Standiford remained seated behind his massive desk, making no effort to be cordial, regarding Mark with cool detachment.

"Who is Wyatt and why should I care?" Standiford said.

"He was the man you hired to kill the kidnappers who murdered your daughter."

There was a moment of silence. Mark had been scanned for listening devices in the elevator, and he knew the office was secure, so Standiford wasn't silent out of fear of incriminating himself. The casino magnate was considering something else.

"I never knew his name," Standiford finally said. "But I will mourn him. He was a good man."

"Wyatt was a murderer," Mark said. "The only difference between him and the people who killed your daughter is that he enjoyed it."

"He was justice," Standiford said.

"With a Swiss bank account," Mark said. "Or was it in the Cayman Islands?"

"Even justice has a price, Dr. Sloan," Standiford said.

"Not that we'll ever be able to trace how you paid it," Mark said. "Which makes you a very lucky man."

"I've lost my daughter and, for all intents and purposes, my wife," Standiford said. "There isn't an hour that goes by that I don't imagine the terror and agony my daughter endured. They chopped off her finger and they buried her alive. For hours she sat curled up in a corner of that dark, hot pit, slowly suffocating to death, and all because of me and my money. I'm responsible for what happened to her, and I carry that guilt every day. Oh yeah, I'm a very lucky man."

"You could be imagining all those things in a jail cell," Mark said. "But that isn't going to happen, because the one person who could have linked you to three murders is dead."

Standiford met Mark's gaze. "
Three
?"

"Wyatt didn't finish the job," Mark said. "There's one fugitive still out there somewhere. But you're not going to hire somebody else to kill him."

"Why not?" Standiford said.

"Because the FBI and the Justice Department will be watching you," Mark said, "And so will I."

Standiford smirked. "Do you think you frighten me?"

Mark shook his head and stood up. "I didn't frighten Wyatt, either."

And with that, Mark Sloan walked away from Roger Standiford—and from any effort to prove the casino owner hired Raymond Wyatt to murder Stuart Appleby, Diane Love, and William Gregson.

Mark didn't walk away because he sympathized with Standiford or believed the three fugitives deserved their grisly fates. He walked away because Standiford was already enduring a life sentence of unimaginable suffering no amount of wealth could ever alleviate.

He was walking away from Roger Standiford, but not the pursuit of the one surviving kidnapper who could still be held accountable for the heinous murder of Connie Standiford.

As Mark emerged from the T-Rex casino and stood in the long line of tourists waiting for a taxi, he thought about what his next move might be.

Since he was in Las Vegas, Mark considered going back to see if he could learn more about Jason Brennan from Patsy Durkin, his showgirl ex-girlfriend. But then he recalled her most vivid memory of her old boyfriend was that he urinated frequently and never put the toilet seat down. It wasn't exactly vital information that would give him blazing new insights into Jason Brennan's character.

He would have to return, yet again, to the deceptively simple, and yet aggravatingly complex, little recipe card.

All of Stuart Appleby's coconspirators were on it somewhere. Why couldn't he see where Jason was?

Over the past two days, Mark had done virtually nothing except study the recipes, trying to twist them into anagrams that might reveal who Jason Brennan was and where he could be found.

But it was fruitless.

A taxi pulled up to the curb with a placard across the trunk advertising the Girls of Glitter Gulch strip club. It got him thinking about Patty Durkin again and the other things she'd said about Jason.

"
He was thirsty all the time, always had a Big Gulp in his car liked to put catsup on rice, which is pretty disgusting if you ask me. And he wore lots of tank tops and sleeveless shirts."

"Which leads me to my next question, " Mark said. "How would you describe him physically?"

"Great," she said.

"Could you be more specific?"

"Buff tight, in good shape," she said. "How much more specific do you want me to get?"

"Any defining characteristics?"

"Oh yeah," she said grinning.

"I meant tattoos, scars, birthmarks."

"He had a little scar on his forehead from a construction accident. A few two-by-fours fell on his head.

Mark smiled to himself.

A few days ago at the beach house, when he'd been acting for the benefit of Wyatt's listening devices, he'd told Steve he'd unlocked the secrets of the recipe card, that the answer to Jason Brennan's identity was so obvious, it was invisible.

The irony was that Mark had actually been telling the truth, he just didn't know it at the time.

But he knew it now.

Chester Greene was sitting on a couch at the Inxpot the next morning, sipping a large mug of coffee, looking contemplatively into the roaring fire in the fireplace, when Mark Sloan came in and took a seat across from him.

"Dr. Sloan," Chester said in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"Your coworkers at the real estate office told me I could find you here. There's been some progress in the investigation," Mark said. "And I thought it would be was best if I told you about it face-to-face. But before I do, how are you and the kids holding up?"

Chester shrugged. "They're too young to really understand—they just know that Mommy is never coming back. I don't know how I'll ever tell them the rest. I'm still trying to get a grip on it myself. I just try to take life day by day. I've been going into the office, but I can't really get myself worked up about real estate, you know?"

Mark nodded. "I'm sure your coworkers understand. Is your family helping you take care of the kids until things settle down?"

Chester took a sip of his coffee. "Our friends are helping out. I haven't kept in close touch with my family. You know how it is sometimes."

Mark nodded again.

"So what did you come here to tell me?" Chester asked.

"We caught the man who killed your wife," Mark said. "You don't have to worry anymore—you're safe now."

Chester leaned back on the couch, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Thank God. Where is he now?"

'The morgue," Mark said. "He took his own life rather than face prosecution."

"So, then, it's all over," Chester said.

"Not quite," Mark replied.

Chester sat up again, setting his mug on the coffee table between them. "You're going to go after the guy who hired him."

Mark shook his head. "No."

"Why not?" Chester said, color rising in his cheeks. "He's responsible for my wife's death."

"We can't prove it, not with the hit man dead," Mark said. "Besides, don't you think he's suffered enough?"

"I wouldn't know," Chester said.

"Sure you would," Mark replied. "You're partly responsible for it."

"I loved Stella," Chester said. "I never knew the woman you say committed those crimes. The caring, nurturing woman I was married to could never have been a kidnapper."

"And a murderer," Mark said. "Just like you."

Chester's face turned rigid. "This conversation is over, Dr. Sloan."

He got up and turned toward the door. That's when he saw Agent Barton Feldman in his FBI parka, sitting at the counter. Two other agents were outside the door.

"Sit down, Chester." Feldman said.

He sat down, his face still hard and flushed with anger.

"When I told you we'd caught your wife's killer, and that you were safe now, you didn't say anything," Mark said.

"Is that what this is about?" Chester said. "Okay, thank you. I really appreciate everything you've done."

Mark smiled. "That wasn't what I was looking for. I was expecting you to ask what made me think you were ever in any danger. After all, the hit man was chasing your wife for a crime she committed. Why would he want to hurt you?"

"When someone murders your wife for revenge, it's only natural to assume you and your family might be in danger, too."

"Especially if you committed the crime with her," Mark said. "But the hit man didn't know that. I didn't realize it myself until yesterday."

"I didn't even know Stella five years ago," Chester said.

"I suppose that's technically true, since back then she was Diane Love and you were Jason Brennan," Mark said. "You were living with a showgirl named Patsy Durkin and working for Standiford Construction. You know what Patsy said about you? That you were thirsty all the time, went to the bathroom constantly, and always left the toilet seat up."

"That's the crime this Brennan guy committed? Leaving the seat up?" Chester glanced over his shoulder at the FBI agents. "When did that become a federal offense?"

"Patsy also said you were hit on the head in an accident at work," Mark said. "None of that clicked for me, not even when I saw the desmopressin acetate inhaler in your medicine cabinet."

"You went through my medicine cabinet?" Chester said, his flush getting even darker.

Mark shrugged. "I can't help myself. That's why I don't get invited to many dinner parties. Desmopressin acetate is prescribed for people with pituitary insufficiency, which is characterized by excessive thirst and frequent urination."

"What does that have to do with him getting bonked on the head?" Feldman asked, taking a seat next to Chester on the couch.

"The condition can be caused by head trauma," Mark explained to Feldman. "But the real ah-ha for me was the Royal Hawaiian recipe card."

Mark addressed himself to Chester again. "Stuart Appleby hid contact information about all three of you in anagrams on a recipe card that he kept in a safe-deposit box. I was able to find anagrams for everybody but you. It was driving me crazy. And then I realized I'd already found it.

Stuart didn't do an anagram for you because you and Diane were in the same place."

"Sounds pretty airtight to me," Feldman said, turning to Chester. "I bet if we got a court order compelling you to undergo a facial X ray, we'd discover you've got an entirely new face."

Feldman snapped his fingers, as if something had just occurred to him, then reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a neatly folded piece of paper.

"Well, what do you know?" Feldman said, placing the paper in Chester's lap. "I've got a court order right here."

Chester's whole body seemed to sag, sinking deeper into the couch, as if he alone were feeling the effects of gravity.

"We never meant to hurt her," Chester said, his voice barely above a whisper.

"You didn't think amputating her finger with a meat cleaver would hurt?" Feldman asked incredulously.

"She was giving us attitude," Chester said. "Laughing at us, not taking any of it seriously. She was a spoiled rich kid calling us a bunch of miserable losers. Stuart just snapped. If she didn't believe we were serious, what was her father going to think? We had to do something to show them who was in charge. So we cut off her pinkie. She fainted after that, which made her a lot easier to handle."

"You just threw her in a pit and buried her alive." Mark said.

"That's not what we did," Chester said. "We hid her underground—it's a totally different thing. We made sure she had air and plenty of water. She only had to be down there a few hours."

"It was too hot and there wasn't enough air," Mark said. "She couldn't have survived more than two hours, let alone six or eight. Nobody could have."

"We didn't know that," Chester whined, tears welling in his eyes. "It was an accident."

"Tripping over your shoelace is an accident," Feldman said. "Getting kidnapped, maimed, and buried alive isn't."

"How do you think we felt? We were sick with remorse," Chester said, tears rolling down his cheeks. "We've had to live with the unbearable guilt ever since."

"Not to mention a couple million bucks," Feldman said. "Boo-hoo."

"We aren't monsters. The guilt ate away at us," Chester said, wiping away his tears with the back of his hand. "Diane was tormented by nightmares and panic attacks every night. It was horrible. We thought it would end when the kids were born, but it only got worse."

"Because now you could imagine the horror of your children suffering the torture you put Connie Standiford through," Mark said. "And you saw yourselves the way we see you."

Chester nodded, spilling more tears, then looked pleadingly at Mark.

"How am I going to tell my kids what we've done?" Chester asked softly, beginning to sob. "
How
?"

Two days alter Jason Brennan's full confession, a team of FBI agents, led by Special Agent Barton Feldman, arrested Dr. Morris Plume, who'd not only given the fugitives their new faces, but also supplied all their phony identification. It turned out that Dr. Plume had offered the same one-stop shopping for new identities to scores of other wanted felons, including several on the FBI's most wanted list.

Dr. Plume agreed to tell everything he knew and testify in court as often as necessary in return for a new identity of his own and inclusion in the Witness Protection Program.

The arrests earned Barton Feldman an immediate transfer to Chicago and a key post on the Bureau's high-profile special unit on wanted fugitives, where he could mine the mother lode of data gleaned from Dr. Plume's files.