The Last Word (26 page)

“The district attorney,” Steve said.

Jesse grinned. “No, really, what happened?”

“Burnside was assassinated this afternoon,” Mark said. “Steve was caught three minutes later in the sniper’s perch with the murder weapon at his feet.”

“And my fingerprints were on the rifle,” Steve said, “which was one of the weapons recovered when I raided Gaylord Yokley’s compound.”

“And there’s photos of Steve engaged in illegal eavesdropping and surveillance activities for Chief Masters,” Tyrell added. “Burnside was killed within hours of receiving them.”

“Oh boy,” Jesse said. He turned to Steve. “You’re so competitive, you just had to get yourself arrested for a bigger murder than I did.”

“You’re accused of serial killing,” Steve said. “I think that’s bigger.”

“No, assassinating a public figure is much bigger,” Jesse said. “You win, buddy. But I look better in this jumpsuit than you do.”

“The hell you do,” Steve said. “You’ve got no shoulders. This looks tailored on me.”

Seeing them joking like that, in the midst of the worst adversity they’d ever faced, gave Mark some hope. It proved to him that, no matter what, they hadn’t given up.

Tyrell leaned towards Mark. “What is wrong with them?”

Mark smiled. “Nothing. Besides being charged with murders they didn’t commit and facing possible execution.”

Tyrell shook his head. Jesse and Steve abruptly stopped talking, the words catching in their throats when they saw the guards bringing Amanda and Susan to the cell.

Jesse’s eyes immediately welled with tears. The moment Susan was let in, Jesse shuffled over to her and they pressed against each other, face-to-face. With their wrists chained, they were unable to embrace. But they kissed, and rubbed their faces together, their tears intermingling.

Mark hugged Amanda. She and Steve exchanged kisses on the cheek.

It was a bittersweet reunion. Although they hadn’t been separated long, the gulf between Mark and his loved ones had grown wide and deep. Mark was free and they were imprisoned, and were likely to stay that way, for many, many years to come.

Susan and Jesse sat close together, clutching each other’s hands as if that was all that was keeping them tethered to this earth.

She looked plaintively at Mark. “What is happening to us?”

“Vengeance,” Mark said.

“Who have we wronged?” Susan asked.

“You haven’t,” Mark said. “I have. And this is how they are making me pay—by taking away everything and everyone that I care about.”

“They?” Amanda said. “I thought it was Carter Sweeney.”

“It’s him and it’s everyone else I’ve put in that prison,” Mark said. “They’ve teamed up and pooled their resources under Sweeney’s leadership. They’re making you suffer so that I will.”

“How do you know?” Jesse asked.

“Because Carter Sweeney told me,” Mark said.

Mark shared with them everything he’d learned from Sweeney and what he’d manage to figure out on his own.

He told them that the guns-to-gangs plot, the West Nile virus killings, the body-parts ring, and the murder of Neal Burnside weren’t individual events but parts of a larger plot.

All of them, including Burnside and Masters, had acted exactly the way Sweeney knew they would and, in doing so, had engineered their own doom.

And now all the people responsible for sending Carter Sweeney to prison were ruined, publicly exposed as greedy, corrupt, and murderous right on the eve of his habeas corpus hearing.

Even Los Angeles was paying for its crimes against the Sweeneys. With the DA and the police chief embroiled in scandal, and no mayoral candidates left, the city would be plunged into anarchy.

“Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Tyrell said. “You’re saying the four of them have been framed in a vast conspiracy concocted by a dozen murderers currently incarcerated at a maximum-security prison?”

Mark nodded.

“And you expect me to convince a jury that this insanely far-fetched conspiracy is for real?” Tyrell asked.

“It’s what happened,” Mark said.

“I don’t see it,” Tyrell said. “More importantly, I don’t know how to make a jury see it as anything but a paranoid fantasy.”

“Let’s start with Teeg Cantrell,” Mark said.

“Who the hell is he?” Tyrell asked.

“A gang member who tried to kill his girlfriend in a drive-by shooting,” Steve said. “He missed, but managed to kill an innocent bystander anyway.”

“Typical,” Tyrell said. “And tragic.”

“It was an incident that Sweeney had Yokley intentionally provoke at that particular time and place,” Mark said. “Sweeney knew that Steve would get the case, discover that Yokley was dealing guns, and then lead a raid on Yokley’s home.”

“What was the point?” Tyrell asked.

“To tie me to the weapon Olivia was going to use to murder Neal Burnside,” Steve said.

“The same evidence that links you to the guns also links her,” Tyrell said, making notes on his legal pad. “Okay, I can use that.”

“You’ll have to establish a motive for her,” Steve said. “And we haven’t figured that out yet.”

“I only have to establish reasonable doubt,” Tyrell said. “Motive doesn’t matter. She’s not going to be on trial. You are.”

“Speaking of motive,” Amanda said, “I’d sure like to know why Noah Dent helped Mercy Reynolds kill all those people and frame us.”

Mark looked at Jesse. “I think you can answer that.”

“You knew?” Susan said. “All this time?”

“I suspected Jesse had something to do with Dent’s sudden departure from Community General,” Mark said. “I just never bothered to ask.”

“It all went down during that terrible week when Tyrell was ripping you apart in the Lacey McClure case,” Jesse said. “I thought I was helping out. And now look what’s happened.”

“What did you do?” Mark asked.

“It goes back a few years. There was this medical student working as a paramedic. She responded to a bad bus accident and recognized one of the victims as the man who’d raped and beaten her in college. He’d never been caught,” Jesse said. “She killed him and made it look like he died as a result of his injuries. But you saw through it.”

“Tanya,” Mark said, remembering. “She was a wonderful young woman with such a promising future ahead of her. Turning her in for the murder was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made. She was tried and convicted. What does that have to do with Noah Dent?”

“I went to Toronto, visited Dent’s childhood home, and saw pictures of him and Tanya together. I found out that she was Noah Dent’s first and only true love,” Jesse said. “I used that information to make him undo all the damage that he’d done at Community General.”

“What leverage did you have to make Dent do that?” Amanda asked.

Jesse swallowed hard. It was an unpleasant memory. “I threatened to go to the media and tell them everything Dent had done and why he did it. Tanya would be raped again, only in the media this time, and it would be his fault. Did he really want to put her through that again just to get back at Mark?”

It was an ugly threat, one that Mark knew must have sickened Jesse to make.

“Would you really have done that?” Steve asked.

Jesse nodded. “I would have done it for Susan, for Mark, for Amanda, and for myself. I was defending my family. I blackmailed Dent into setting things right, and then he left. I guess all I really did was delay the inevitable and make things much worse.”

“You did all that detective work on your own?” Steve asked him.

“I had some help,” Jesse said, glancing at his wife.

“I’m surprised you didn’t tell Mark about it at the time,” Amanda said.

“He was going through hell as it was,” Jesse said, giving Tyrell a nasty look. “I didn’t want him to have to relive what happened with Tanya, and I didn’t want him to feel guilty for something that I did.”

Mark didn’t know what to say. Jesse had taken on a big emotional burden to spare him pain and to fix a problem that Mark had created. Hearing this admission only added to the enormous guilt Mark already felt for the misery he was causing Jesse and Susan now. Once again, the ones he loved were paying for his choices and his actions.

“I get why Dent would go after Mark, you, and Susan, but why would he help kill innocent people?” Amanda asked. “And why frame me for a crime? How does it all fit into Sweeney’s grand plan?”

“I don’t know how much Dent knew or didn’t know about what Mercy Reynolds was doing, but I can guess at Sweeney’s reasoning,” Mark said. “The goal for him wasn’t only to frame the three of you for crimes but to create a scandal that would destroy my reputation, get me fired, and that Burnside would use to attack Masters. Sweeney was establishing a motive for Steve to be angry enough with Burnside to want him dead.”

“But it would take a lot more than that to make the frame against me stick, which takes us back to square one and Gaylord Yokley,” Steve said. “Sweeney used him and his ROAR buddies to make it look like I foiled a plot to spark a gang war on the streets of LA.”

“You’ve been giving this a lot of thought, too,” Mark said.

“From the moment I walked into that apartment and saw the rifle on the floor,” Steve said.

“Using Yokley served another purpose,” Mark said. “Sweeney sent his attorney, Tony Sisk, in to represent Yokley and Cantrell because he knew it would play on the chief’s paranoia and provoke him to do something radical.”

“Like ordering me and Tanis to bug Sisk’s phones. And we walked right into the trap,” Steve said, shaking his head, frustrated with himself. “They had cameras in place, just waiting to catch us in the act. I gave Sweeney the evidence he needed to make it look like I killed Burnside for the chief. I’m a damn puppet. The clever bastard played us all.”

“No worse than I have,” Mark said.

“You’ve never manipulated us,” Amanda said.

“Of course I have,” Mark said. “And I have been doing it for years. Carter Sweeney didn’t put you here. I did.”

There was a shocked silence in the cell, everyone staring at Mark. He waited a moment, letting his words sink in, and then he continued.

“I have an obsession with solving homicides and I’ve used each one of you to satisfy it. You are doctors. You didn’t come to Community General to investigate murders. But you each had something I needed. Talent, energy, specialized knowledge. Under the guise of offering you guidance and friendship, I selfishly manipulated you in every way I possibly could to get you to help me, even though it might cost you your careers or your lives.”

“We wanted to help,” Jesse said. “That’s why we did it.”

“You only think you did. After Jack Stewart left Community General, I didn’t have anyone I could use to do all my legwork. I got Jack into it because he came from a Mob family and was eager to do anything he could to prove he wasn’t like them. Controlling Jack was easy. But you, Jesse, were even easier,” Mark said. “Your father was absent in your life. You were hungering for a father figure to take his place. It was obvious the day I met you. So I became that father figure, the better to use you. I even got you to believe that you wanted to be me. And really, who would want that?”

“I would,” Jesse said.

“Really? After what I’ve done to Susan? I played on her love for you to get her to take ridiculous risks she never would have contemplated otherwise.” Mark met Susan’s gaze. “You never wanted to be a part of any of it. But your devotion to Jesse forced you to keep your profound misgivings about me to yourself and accept the unreasonable sacrifices he was willing to make to please me. Tell me that isn’t true. No, better yet, tell Jesse.”

Susan stared at Mark, tears streaming down her cheeks. But she didn’t say a word.

“Susan?” Jesse said, squeezing her hand. “I know that isn’t true and so do you.”

But she couldn’t look at Jesse. It felt too much like a betrayal.

Mark smiled at her and kissed her gently on the forehead.

“It’s all right,” Mark said, then turned to Amanda. “You were the easiest to turn of all. Doing autopsies was part of your job. It didn’t take much to nudge you into getting involved in my homicide investigations. I played on your energy and ambition to pressure you into becoming an adjunct county medical examiner. You took on two full-time jobs at once, just so I could have unfettered access to the morgue. Did I care that it drove you to exhaustion, took you away from your son, and destroyed every romantic relationship you tried to have? No. Because I got what I wanted.”

“That’s hardly a revelation,” Tyrell said. “I proved that in court during the Lacey McClure case.”

“You were wrong, Tyrell,” Amanda said. “And so are you, Mark. I’ve always wanted to be a medical examiner. Your interest in homicide investigation and your connections with the LAPD made it absurdly easy for me. If anyone took advantage in this relationship, it was me. I manipulated you into thinking it was your idea to put a county morgue in the hospital, and the worst thing about it is that you still believe it.”

Mark shook his head. “You’re incapable of using anyone like that.”

“I used you,” Amanda said. “I don’t deserve to be on your conscience. I’m here because of the decisions I made in my life. This is as much about my past catching up with me as it is yours.”

“Me too,” Jesse said. “This is Dent getting back at me for something I did.”

“Something you did for me, for an investigation I got you involved in,” Mark said. “Open your eyes. All of you. See me for who I am and what I’ve done.”

“Okay, Dad. What about me?” Steve asked. “Are you going to take responsibility for me being a cop, too?”

“I’ve used you most of all,” Mark said. “I made you think the only way to win my love and respect was to become a cop. Look at you. You’re in your forties and you’re still living at home. Because I won’t let you go. Because I’ve sabotaged you. I routinely intruded on your investigations, undermining your authority and making it impossible for you to establish a career separate from mine. Worse than that, I competed with you. I was afraid that if you succeeded without me my worst fear would come true—I’d be alone.”