The Last Word (3 page)

Mark considered getting an opinion from Dr. Amanda Bentley, the adjunct county medical examiner and Community General’s pathologist, but she’d nearly died in the hospital blast, and she wouldn’t approve of Mark’s consenting to any request from the man who’d almost killed her.

The only one of Mark’s friends who might have told him to visit Sweeney was Dr. Jesse Travis, the young ER resident whose enthusiasm and curiosity often trumped his common sense and better judgment. In fact, Jesse would probably have insisted on tagging along with Mark.

So, after a day of indecision, Mark decided it would be easier just to face his adversary and get it over with than to continue obsessing over what Sweeney might be up to.

And now that the visit was over, Mark sat baking in his car outside the prison, a concrete island amidst a sea of cotton fields two hundred miles north of Los Angeles. He went over their conversation again, word for word. The exercise didn’t provoke any fresh insights, only another wave of nausea, which thankfully passed quickly.

Mark was no closer to understanding Sweeney’s reasons for wanting to see him than he had been before the visit. But he was sure Sweeney hadn’t summoned him merely to announce his latest legal maneuvering.

So what message was Sweeney actually trying to convey?

He told himself to let it go; the answers didn’t matter anyway. Unlike Carter Sweeney, Mark still had a life to live.

Corinne Adams did everything she could to ensure that she would have a long, healthy life. The blond-haired twenty-four-year-old didn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs. She was even reluctant to take Advil for a headache, preferring massage, meditation, or a bracing cup of herbal tea as a way of relieving her pain.

She ran for thirty minutes each day on her treadmill, which was strategically placed in front of the TV in her one-bedroom apartment. She watched
House Hunters
while she exercised, dreaming of what she would buy when she finally sold one of her screenplays and gave up secretarial work forever.

She was a vegetarian and brushed her teeth after every low-cal, low-fat, organic meal. She was the thinnest, healthiest member of her obese family, none of whom had ever stood on a scale and seen the needle point to anything below two hundred pounds.

One night four years ago, when Corinne still lived at home in Woodland Hills, the whole family went out to dinner at Home Sweet Home Buffet. It was seafood night. Her mother, Noreen, was going back for thirds when she dropped dead of a massive heart attack. The other diners paused, confused, in their lemming-like march to the fried shrimp, until management stepped in and ushered everyone to the opposite side of the restaurant.

The tragedy at Home Sweet Home Buffet had a profound effect on Corinne. She moved out of the house, went on a strict diet, began exercising regularly, and earnestly pursued her dream of becoming a screenwriter. All of her scripts, regardless of their plots, were titled “Home Sweet Home Buffet,” which made it difficult, even for her, to tell her screenplays apart without reading the first few pages.

The scripts, which were either family dramas or romantic comedies, had nothing to do with her mother’s death. Corinne just thought “Home Sweet Home Buffet” sounded clever, and she liked all the meanings that could be read into the title.

She’d written all of her screenplays with Reese Witherspoon, Julia Roberts, or Sandra Bullock in mind, because they played characters who were just like her: spunky, adorable, independent, and desirable.

A big part of her desirability came from her new breasts. She’d had to work three jobs for two years to save up enough to get them. It wasn’t an issue of vanity, but rather a matter of basic survival. In LA, having a nice rack meant she would get better jobs, better pay, better health benefits, and better men.

But so far the only men she seemed to date were her miserable screenwriting instructors at UCLA’s extension school. They were hack writers who never got the money or recognition they knew they deserved, so now, for a measly $1,500 a quarter and a healthy serving of irony, they taught other people how to compete against them. Corinne couldn’t help wondering if her instructors were taking her money and intentionally sabotaging her scripts with bad advice.

Even so, that didn’t stop her from sleeping with her instructors, who, in the absence of recent screen credits, measured their self-worth by how many students they could seduce.

She didn’t mind that. The part she didn’t like was sitting in the classroom with nineteen other wannabes, their desperation to break into the Industry as palpable as body odor. Ben Bovian, the instructor on this particular night, was no less desperate, though his aspirations were focused on breaking into Corinne’s pants.

That wasn’t going to happen, partly because Corinne was bored with his fumbling foreplay, which consisted of sticking his tongue in her ear while they watched his unforgettable episodes of
Sue Thomas
F.B.Eye
, and his postcoital whining six minutes later about all the less talented, but more successful, screenwriters who were getting all the work.

But mostly Ben wouldn’t be going to bed with her tonight because Corinne would never sleep with anyone again, though she didn’t know that at the time.

The first hour of class was spent giving notes to Jeremy Glatz, a thirty-four-year-old travel agent, on his 257-page, handwritten, epic screenplay about a thirty-four-year-old travel agent who was irresistible to women.

Ben went through the atrocious script page by page, commenting in detail on lame lines of description and inept dialogue. It was an excruciating and pointless exercise, Corinne thought. The most constructive advice Ben could give Jeremy would be to chuck the whole screenplay into the trash and give up the idea of ever becoming a writer.

By the time the ten-minute break came around, Corinne was so eager to escape Jeremy’s horrendous writing and Ben’s hungry glances that she bolted out of the third-floor classroom and rushed down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

That was a mistake.

She missed a step on the second flight and went tumbling down the stairs with a shriek, banging off the steps, the walls, and the handrails until she finally landed headfirst on the linoleum floor of the lobby with a sickening, bone-cracking
smack
.

But she didn’t hear it.

She didn’t feel it either.

She was past hearing or feeling anything ever again.

It was a slow night in the emergency room at Community General Hospital. Dr. Jesse Travis sat in the waiting room, his feet on a coffee table, watching an episode of
Grey’s Anatomy
and eating a bag of Cheetos. His wife, Susan, an ER nurse, sat next to him, her head on his shoulder.

Jesse liked the weight of her, the pressure of her, the warmth of her against him. He couldn’t imagine how he could ever survive without it. And he didn’t think he was just romanticizing his need for her. He’d read about studies done on monkeys that died, despite terrific diets and comfortable environments, because they were deprived of the “contact comfort” of other monkeys.

A full bag of Cheetos and a big-screen TV weren’t enough for him anymore. He needed Susan, too.

He’d become one of those monkeys.

He was a love monkey.

Jesse was about to tell Susan what he was thinking, but then he thought better of it. He had a feeling that telling Susan that he realized they were just like monkeys wouldn’t strike her as the most romantic thing he’d ever said.

He and Susan were newlyweds and spent most of their waking hours at the hospital. Home was just the place where they slept, showered, and changed clothes. So the ER waiting room had become their family room, one they reluctantly shared with the general public and, on occasion, a few homeless people seeking shelter from the elements.

Jesse gestured to the TV. “This is a show about the worst doctors in America.”

“But that Dr. McDreamy guy is cute,” Susan said.

“Every one of those oversexed doctors is guilty of malpractice, unethical behavior, and unbelievable stupidity.”

“But they’re cute,” Susan said.

“So nothing else matters.”

“It’s television, Jesse.”

“Tens of millions of people watch this show,” Jesse said. “They think that’s how doctors are supposed to behave. No real doctor could make the mistakes that they do on a consistent basis and still be allowed to practice medicine.”

“Real doctors aren’t nearly as entertaining,” she said. “Or cute.”

“What about me?”

“I married you, didn’t I?” she said.

“That’s not an answer,” Jesse said.

She kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll just have to live with it.”

“The patients would be better off operating on themselves with garden tools,” Jesse said. “That hospital is a death trap.”

“Full of cuties,” she added.

“I had no idea you were so superficial,” Jesse said.

“I thought that’s what attracted you to me,” Susan said.

“No, it was your body,” Jesse said.

“At least you’re not superficial,” Susan said.

“I’ve got so much depth that people have been known to fall to their deaths just looking into my eyes.”

“I can vouch for that,” Susan said.

An ambulance pulled up outside. Jesse and Susan got up, put on surgical gloves, and met the paramedics as they came in, wheeling their bloody patient on a gurney.

The paramedics were two stocky men who looked like they needed to catch up on sleep. One of them was pumping an Ambu bag to keep the patient breathing. The other paramedic gave Jesse the rundown on their patient, who had a cervical collar around her neck, a cardboard splint around her left wrist, and an IV line in her right arm.

“The victim’s name is Corinne Adams, age twenty-four. She took a header down a staircase,” the paramedic said. “And I mean a header. Cracked her skull open like an egg. She’s also got a broken wrist. She’s not breathing on her own. Her blood pressure is one hundred over fifty, pulse one-twenty-five, her sats are ninety-five percent on four liters. We started an IV of D-five with lactated ringers.”

Jesse lifted her eyelids and shined a light in both of her eyes. Her pupils were wide open, big and black. It was like staring into the eyes of a Barbie doll.

It wasn’t a good sign.

“Let’s get her into trauma one,” Jesse said, leading the way. “Anyone contact her family?”

“The police are on it,” the paramedic said.

They wheeled her into the trauma room. Jesse, Susan, and the paramedics lifted Corinne onto the table and transferred her IV bag to a stand. Several more nurses spilled into the room. They started getting the things that they knew from experience Jesse was going to ask for. Susan took over pumping the Ambu bag to keep Corinne Adams breathing.

Jesse listened to Corinne’s heart and lungs, which she’d worked so hard to keep healthy and strong. They hadn’t failed her now. She had good heart and breath sounds. The organs were working.

He palpitated her belly, the one she’d kept flat and firm with diet and exercise, checking for internal injuries and unusual masses. It was clear.

“I need blood gases, CBC, SMA-seven, and type and cross for four units of blood in case we have to do some surgery.” Jesse rattled off the orders to the nurses while he tapped Corinne’s right elbow and knees with a tiny rubber hammer, checking her reflexes. She didn’t have any. “Get me a skull X-ray, cross-table lateral C-spine, and a CT of the head. Make it fast.”

One of the nurses hurried out. Susan looked across Corinne’s body to Jesse, who was preparing to intubate the patient and put her on a ventilator that would take over her breathing.

“What do you think?” Susan asked.

“Check her driver’s license,” Jesse said. “We need to find out if she’s an organ donor.”

The parked cars along the south side of the 2300 block of Messmer Avenue in Canoga Park were riddled with bullet holes. Shattered glass sprinkled the sidewalks and glittered in the light cast by the streetlamps, headlights, and the multicolored light bars atop the police cruisers. There was something magical about the glimmer of the glass shards that made Lieutenant Steve Sloan think of Christmas trees, the Las Vegas Strip, and pirate treasure.

He stepped carefully over the sidewalk to the manicured lawn in front of one of the nearly identical ranch-style homes that lined the San Fernando Valley street.

There were three bullet holes in the living room window of the house. One of the bullets had hit the big-screen TV that dominated the room. Another bullet had traveled clear through the house, out the kitchen window, and into the back fence, where several crime scene techs were digging out the slug and taking pictures. The remaining bullet had passed through the neck of Wilbur C. Gant and become entangled in the springs and stuffing of the recliner he was sitting in.

Wilbur C. Gant was a thirty-seven-year-old accountant who lived in his childhood home, which he had bought from his mother so she could fulfill her dream of retiring to a mobile home in Twentynine Palms. He was single, wore suspenders because he liked the look of them, and bled to death watching a rerun of
CSI
.

Steve peered in the window but didn’t bother going inside the house. He could see Dr. Amanda Bentley, chief pathologist at Community General, leaning over the body in her blue MEDICAL EXAMINER Windbreaker. Her path lab did double duty as an extension of the county morgue, and so did she—as an adjunct county medical examiner. She was African American and a few years younger than Steve, whom she treated like her older brother.

He already knew that Gant wasn’t the intended target of the bullets. That honor belonged to LaShonda Wilkes, who was sitting on the curb across the street with her two children, three-year-old LaTisha and five-year-old Chase. The hairstylist and unwed mother had been driving home from work with her children when her estranged boyfriend, Teeg Cantrell, pulled up alongside her in his pickup truck. When she turned to look at him, he pointed an automatic weapon at her. LaShonda slammed on her brakes at the same moment he started firing.