The Last Word (24 page)

Steve peered around the corner into the kitchen area. The body of a young man, perhaps in his late teens or early twenties, was on his back on the floor, his arms raised above his head. He wore cargo shorts and a T-shirt. Rusty Konrath had been shot once in the chest and once in the head and dragged by the arms into the kitchen.

Steve knew what he was going to find next. He knew it as if he’d lived this moment before or had been given a script in advance.

But he had to see it anyway.

His heart was pounding so loudly it felt to him like someone was hitting the side of the building with a battering ram.

Steve stepped into the living room. One of the windows was open. A rifle with a scope sat on the floor in front of the window, along with a pillow where the shooter had rested his knees.

He peered out the window. He had a direct, unobstructed view of the high school steps.

Of course.

There was a crowd around Neal Burnside’s body behind the podium. People were screaming and pointing in the general direction of the window where Steve now stood.

Someone had shot Neal Burnside. And if the shooter was the same professional who’d killed Mercy Reynolds and Rusty Konrath, then Neal Burnside was almost certainly dead.

Steve had shown up within seconds of the shooting. The killer hadn’t fled into the stairwell and probably didn’t take the elevator. Which meant the killer was still in the building. Or at least he was until Steve entered Konrath’s apartment.

But it was too late for Steve to start searching now. Officers were undoubtedly swarming around the building and charging up the stairs. Whether they found Steve in the hall, the stairwell, or the elevator, the outcome would be the same.

Steve holstered his gun, took out his badge, and clipped it to his jacket so when the cops came rushing in they wouldn’t shoot him.

He raised his hands, too, just to be safe.

Two uniformed officers and one detective burst into the room, their guns aimed squarely at Steve’s chest.

The detective was Olivia Morales. She didn’t seem very happy to see him.

“He’s one of us. I know him,” she said, but she didn’t lower her gun. “What are you doing here, Steve?”

“I didn’t shoot Burnside, if that’s what you’re asking, Olivia. I was in the building running down a lead in a murder case. I heard the shot and ran up here, hoping to catch the shooter. It’s just a coincidence.”

But even as he said it, he knew that it wasn’t.

Mercy’s murder, the message on her tape machine, all of it was intended to bring him right here, right now. Things were only going to get worse for him from this point on. He was certain of that.

“I’m going to need to take your gun,” she said.

Given their relationship, there were a lot of cute ways he could have answered that question to ease the tension in the room. But this wasn’t the time for cute. He simply nodded.

She motioned to one of the officers, who stepped forward, patted Steve down, and took his gun. The officer placed it in an evidence bag.

“You two secure the floor,” Olivia said, holstering her weapon and taking the evidence bag from the officer. “I’ll stay with Lieutenant Sloan.”

He knew that he had to be treated like a suspect. He didn’t resent Olivia for it. He would have done the same in her position.

And then it hit him.

Olivia’s being here was yet another coincidence. She was working the Yokley case. Her presence was every bit as strange and convenient as Steve’s arrival on the scene.

It wasn’t the hand of fate, but someone’s hand was involved. He had no doubt about that.

“It was a big surprise seeing you come through the door,” Steve said.

“It was a bigger surprise seeing you standing where the sniper should be.”

“You know why I’m here,” Steve said.

“I’m still vague on the details,” she said.

So he told her, from the beginning. And when he was done, he said, “What’s your story?”

“Mine’s a lot simpler. Burnside called me an hour ago, said he needed to see me right away. He told me to meet him at the high school,” Olivia said. “I guess I’ll never find out why now.”

“So he’s dead.”

“As can be,” she said.

The narrow street in front of Mark Sloan’s beach house was clogged with police cars. Mark’s first, horrifying thought as he drove up was that Steve had been killed, but that quickly passed when he saw that there were no vehicles from the medical examiner’s office or the morgue.

He was so relieved he almost didn’t care what the police were doing at his house.

Mark parked on the shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway, waited for traffic to pass, then opened his door and got out. He was heading for his house when one of his neighbors, walking a wonderfully coiffed poodle, stopped him.

Prentiss Cloud was a jeweler in his fifties with tanning-parlor skin and a head of white hair that rivaled his poodle’s. Cloud seemed to be wearing the entire inventory of his Malibu store on his neck, ears, and fingers at all times.

“Enough is enough, Dr. Sloan,” Cloud said. “Your home is a magnet for crime and disaster. We’ve seen it all at your house. Bombings, murders, robberies, shootings, kidnappings, plagues, and rapes.”

“There’s never been a rape,” Mark said.

Cloud glared at him. So did the dog. “Do you know why the police are here this time?”

“No,” Mark said.

“Maybe it’s rape. Or a beheading. Or perhaps they’ve finally found Osama bin Laden,” Cloud said. “Anything is possible at the Sloan residence.”

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience.” Mark started to go past him, but Cloud blocked his way.

“This is where we live, Dr. Sloan. This is where we seek peace, comfort, and security. Maybe even a little privacy,” Cloud said. “But that’s not possible with you as a neighbor. Do us a favor and move. Do the world a favor and go somewhere remote where you can’t make life miserable for your neighbors.”

Cloud marched off with his poodle, their gaits almost matching. Mark wasn’t angry at Cloud. He’d been expecting his neighbors to show up outside his house with torches for years.

Mark approached the house but was intercepted by a uniformed police officer, a woman who looked like she could bench-press a Toyota.

“Hold it,” she said. “You can’t go in there.”

“I’m Dr. Mark Sloan and that’s my house,” he said. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”

She spoke into her radio. “I’ve got Dr. Sloan out here.”

“I’ll be right out,” a male voice crackled back.

“Stay here,” she said.

He looked over her shoulder and saw a crime scene tech walk out of the house carrying a clear plastic evidence bag that contained several handguns.

Mark had never seen the guns before. Steve had only three, but one was always on him and another was in the lockbox in his trunk at all times.

The tech was followed out a moment later by Lieutenant Sam Rykus, chewing on a fat cigar, his belly straining against the buttons of his shirt.

“Sam,” Mark called out. “What’s going on?”

“We’re searching the place,” Rykus said. “You want to see the warrant?”

“I want to know why you’re doing it,” Mark said.

Rykus stared at him. “You’re joking, right?”

“Do I look like I’m joking?”

“The DA was assassinated an hour ago,” Rykus said. “He was shot while giving a speech at a high school.”

Mark was stunned by the news, but he tried to stay focused on the situation at hand.

“You think that I did it?” Mark asked. “You think that because he criticized me on TV I’d shoot him?”

“No,” Sam said.

“I’ve just returned from a visit to Sunrise Valley Prison. They must have me on a hundred cameras,” Mark said. “Alibis don’t get much better than that.”

“You don’t need one, Doc.”

“Then why are you searching my house?”

“Burnside was shot from an apartment building across the street,” Rykus said. “We found Steve in there with the sniper rifle.”

“You know Steve,” Mark said. “You know he would never do something like this.”

“That’s what I thought,” Rykus said, then jerked his head back towards the house. “But we found an arsenal hidden in there and a rifle just like the one at the apartment.”

“Then they were planted,” Mark said.

Rykus shrugged. “We’re gonna be here for a few more hours. Any minute now, the media is gonna start showing up here. Maybe you want to be somewhere else.”

Mark nodded, grateful for the advice, and walked back to his car, lost in his thoughts.

He knew with absolute certainty that the rifle used to kill Burnside and the guns Rykus found in their house were going to be linked to Gaylord Yokley’s weapons cache.

Because it all fit.

Mark could finally see how the plot Sweeney and his friends had concocted worked. All the pieces were falling into place so rapidly in his mind that it was dizzying.

That’s when he was yanked backwards, nearly off his feet, as a car whizzed by, so close he almost felt the metal brushing his legs.

It snapped him out of his daze and he realized that he’d stepped out onto the Pacific Coast Highway without even bothering to look for traffic first.

How stupid.

He knew the highway was there. He’d even faced the traffic before, and he still didn’t see what was coming.

It was the past few weeks of his life, neatly summed up in one near-death moment.

He turned to the female officer who’d saved him.

“Be careful,” she said.

Mark nodded and said that he would, but it was far too late for that.

 

Steve leaned against his car outside of Konrath’s apartment building. He was waiting to be questioned by whoever the lead investigator in the case turned out to be.

For the moment, the lead investigator was Olivia, the highest-ranking officer on the scene who wasn’t caught practically holding the murder weapon.

There were two officers standing a polite distance away from Steve, pretending to be disinterested but in fact watching to make sure he didn’t flee for the Mexico border.

Which was a good thing, because he was tempted.

But like the generally law-abiding citizen that he was, he stayed put and watched Olivia work.

She’d confiscated the film from the cameramen who’d been covering the speech, an act that was bound to raise all kinds of screaming about First Amendment rights. But it was worth the legal risk to secure the footage before it could be edited and any potential clues lost. She then moved the reporters and all the other media who’d since swarmed to the scene two blocks back behind a police barricade.

Steve would have done the same things in her position, freedom of the press be damned.

Meanwhile, the apartment building and the entire neighborhood were being searched, inch by inch, for any evidence or witnesses that could lead them to the assassin.

LAPD helicopters and a horde of news choppers buzzed loudly overhead, making it necessary for everyone on the street to shout in order to be heard.

Steve’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He took the phone out and answered it.

It was Tanis, but he could barely hear her.

“You’re in big trouble,” Tanis said.

“Believe me, I know.”

“It’s worse than you know,” Tanis said. “All of our bugs on Tony Sisk just went dark.”

“They’ve been discovered,” Steve said.

“Gee, you think? And within minutes of Neal Burnside’s assassination,” Tanis said. “Am I the only one freaked out by the timing?”

He glanced at Olivia, who was conferring with Chief Masters, who’d just arrived on the scene. He wondered if Masters knew the surveillance on Sisk had been compromised or if he’d pulled it himself when he learned where Steve was when Burnside was killed.

But what about Olivia? What was she doing there? How did she get in the building so fast? There was one explanation that came to mind, one he didn’t like very much. It put their whole relationship in a disturbing new light.

“I need you to run a check on all of Olivia Morales’s phones,” Steve said. “I want to know when, and if, she got a call from Burnside’s office today.”

“I can’t do that,” Tanis said.

“We’re talking about a few keystrokes on that supercomputer of yours.”

“I’m nowhere near my supercomputer.”

“Where are you?”

“Where I can’t be found,” Tanis said.

“I need you.”

“I can’t do you or me any good if I’m in jail,” Tanis said. “We’ve been set up and we’re both going down.”

“So you’re going to run?”

“Hell yes.”

A car pulled up a few yards away and Special Agent Ort got out, followed by two other agents.

Steve got a beep from call-waiting. He glanced at his cell phone readout. The caller was his father. He put the phone back to his ear.

“I have to go,” Steve said. “Good luck, Tanis.”

“You too.”

Steve disconnected from Tanis and switched over quickly to Mark. He assumed his father knew about Burnside’s murder, and he didn’t have time to give him the details of his own plight.

“I only have five seconds, Dad. Mercy Reynolds is dead. Her boyfriend was a member of ROAR who was killed in a bank holdup.”

“Carter Sweeney is behind it all,” Mark said. “He told me.”

“I don’t suppose he signed a confession,” Steve said.

“No,” Mark said.

“Then I’m going to need a lawyer,” Steve said and hung up, sticking the phone in his pocket as Ort approached.

“Lieutenant Sloan,” Ort said, shouting to be heard over the noise, “you’re under arrest for the assassination of Neal Burnside.”