Diagnosis Murder 7 - The Double LIfe (24 page)

"All the pieces will fall into place after those two nurses are arrested."

"And if they don't?"

"At least two killers will be off the street and in prison." Jesse finished bandaging Mark's head and admired his handiwork. "I'd like to schedule the bone graft for early next week."

Mark shrugged. "You're the doctor."

"You have to be very careful. The risk of infection is high. And if you were to trip and fall, your head could crack open like an egg."

"I won't wear my roller skates today."

"Good idea. I'll see you tomorrow."

Jesse smiled and hurried off to play detective, leaving Mark alone and on the sidelines of the investigation.

But the more Mark thought about it, the less angry he became. So what if he wasn't on the street? So what if he wasn't included in the briefings? If he could solve most of the mystery while in a coma in a hospital bed, he could certainly figure out the rest while conscious in his living room.

After all, the missing pieces were right here, hidden in the patient files and in the images in his dreams.

All he had to do was figure it out.

How hard could it be?

Mark sat himself down with the files again and went to work. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he hoped he'd know it when he saw it.

Paul Guyot left the house first, bouncing to the beat of whatever he was listening to on his iPod. Steve called ahead to Jesse, who was just arriving in front of the John Muir Hospital parking structure. He told Jesse to call him the moment Guyot showed up.

Ten minutes after Guyot drove off, Wendy Duren emerged from the house in her Appleby nurse's uniform, her hair still wet from her shower. She got into her car and drove to the Starbucks on Ventura Boulevard. Steve was tempted to follow her inside, if only to get himself a fresh coffee.

She emerged carrying a cup of coffee and a paper bag, got into her car, and drove east on Ventura Boulevard. He stayed a couple of car lengths behind her as she took the on-ramp and merged onto the eastbound Ventura Freeway.

Duren stayed in the far right lane. Steve moved one lane over, and as the traffic ebbed and flowed, he found himself at times either a car length or two in front of her or behind her.

Steve didn't dare glance at her when he passed her car for fear of catching her eye. They were transitioning to the southbound San Diego Freeway when Jesse called Steve to report that Guyot had arrived at John Muir Hospital.

"Stay on him until Tanis shows up," Steve said. "If he leaves, call me right away."

"You got it," Jesse said excitedly. "This is fun."

"Let's see how fun you think it is after you've been sitting there for a few hours, you back is aching, your legs are stiff, and your bladder is about to burst."

"I've got my laptop tuned in to the four possible targets." 

"See anything?"

"Vincent Kunz is picking his nose and reading the sports section."

"Detective work doesn't get much more exciting than that," Steve said and hung up.

Wendy Duren took the westbound Santa Monica Boulevard exit off the San Diego Freeway. On a hunch, Steve dialed Appleby Nursing Services and got the receptionist.

"Hello, my name is Phil Bevnic. I'm Wendy Duren's brother-in-law," Steve said. "Her sister has had a little accident. Nothing too serious, just a broken arm, but I thought she should know. I called over to Clara Corn's place, but they said she wasn't working there today."

"She was there yesterday," the receptionist said. "Have you tried her cell?"

"Yeah," Steve said. "I couldn't reach her. She must be in a bad zone. The Sepulveda Pass or one of the canyons." 

"Do you have Roberta Karsch's phone number?"

"Is she the one in Santa Monica?"

"No, Mrs. Karsch lives in North Hollywood," the receptionist said. "Wendy should be there around noon. You could try her there."

The receptionist gave Steve the number, but he didn't pay any attention to it. His heart was pounding so hard the sound of it drowned out her words. He thanked her and ended the call.

It looked like Wendy Duren might be in a big hurry to catch up with her lover by scoring a kill and a
V
of her own.

The endgame could be coming sooner than Steve had thought.

He had a pretty good idea where Duren was going.

Steve broke off his tail, made a hard left off the boulevard, and took a shortcut, putting his bubble light on the top of his truck as soon as he was out of Duren's sight. He weaved at high speed around cars and roared through intersections to gain time on his adversary.

He was parked in front of Alan Vernon's house, with his laptop powered up and already streaming the live audio and visual feed when Wendy Duren drove past him and disappeared around the corner.

Steve wasn't worried about losing her. He figured she was parking away from the house so no one would take note of her car and license plate.

Sure enough, she appeared on foot a few moments later, carrying her Starbucks bag and with her nursing uniform unbuttoned just enough to show a tantalizing hint of cleavage.

As she walked up to Vernon's front door, Steve opened his glove box, took out a handheld TV that was about the size of an iPod, and tuned it to the short-range signal emitted from the surveillance cameras.

He got the earpiece in place just as Vernon opened the front door. The sound and picture were crisp and clear on the tiny screen.

"Mr. Vernon?" Duren asked.

"Alan Vernon," he said boldly, as if introducing himself to her and a television audience, which, as it turned out, he was. "What can I do for you, young lady?"

"I'm Wendy Duren from Appleby Nursing Services."

"That would explain the nurse's uniform," he said with a grin. "I wasn't expecting anyone from the agency until this afternoon."

Steve got out of his truck, closed the door quietly, and made his way towards the house, crouching and using the row of parked cars for concealment. He kept his eyes on the tiny TV screen.

"Your doctor called us this morning. He says you need a shot and he didn't want you to have to schlep all the way to his office in your condition, not for the two seconds it will take to get the injection." She held up the Starbucks bag and flashed her best smile. "I have some sweets to make up for the sting."

Steve wondered if she was referring to her pastries or her open shirt or both. Whatever enticements she was offering, they worked. Vernon stepped aside and welcomed death into his home.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FIVE

It was the most gripping drama Jesse had ever seen. One of the killer nurses was in Alan Vernon's house. And, incredibly, Jesse could see and hear it all as he sat in his parked car in the San Fernando Valley. But he wasn't watching a DVD of a TV show or a movie on his laptop. This was real life. There were no immunity idols or tribal councils. The loser of this reality show was going either to prison or to the grave.

From the day they were born, Alan Vernon, Wendy Duren, and Steve Sloan had been following an inexorable trajectory to the next few moments.

This was too compelling to miss. Jesse couldn't have stopped watching even if he'd wanted to.

And he didn't.

So he stared at his screen in stunned fascination as the deadly scene unfolded. Meanwhile, people walked by on the sidewalk outside, completely unaware of him or the violent forces of fate that were converging like three runaway trains on a tiny bungalow in Santa Monica.

Wendy Duren opened the bag of pastries and set them out for Alan Vernon on the living room table, then helped him to his seat, pressing his arm against her side so he could feel her breast against his skin.

"I hope you like cinnamon coffee cake and blueberry muffins, Mr. Vernon."

"I love them," Vernon said, sitting carefully in his seat, facing the front door. "You didn't have to go to all this trouble for me."

"It was the least I could do," she said behind him, opening her purse and pulling out a syringe and a tiny vial.

"Sort of like a last meal?" He chuckled in that boisterous, insincere manner that had been perfected by anchormen, evangelists, and salesmen over the ages.

"You could say that," Duren said lightheartedly as she plunged the needle into the vial and drew out the drug.

"I'm not afraid of shots. I've had so many lately, I don't even feel them anymore." Vernon started rolling up the sleeve over his pale right arm.

"This will be your last shot," Duren said, turning around and approaching him.

"Do you promise?" Vernon asked, propping his arm on the armrest of the chair for her. A big vein pulsed in the crook of his elbow, just under his thin skin. She dabbed his skin with an antiseptic wipe.

"On your life," she said, tossing the wipe on the table and bringing the needle down to his skin, her thumb on the plunger.

"Mine?" he said with another chuckle. "Isn't it supposed to be
yours?"

Things were happening too fast. Steve wasn't even at the front door yet. He tossed the TV set on the ground, drew his gun, and charged towards the house.

As he ran, Steve wondered if Vernon had set the dead bolt. He doubted it. Vernon probably hadn't even bothered to lock the door. The only thing holding the door in place would be a weak little doorknob.

Not that it mattered now. Steve was committed to action. There was no stopping, even if it meant breaking bones. He turned his left shoulder to the door, braced himself for the pain, and threw his entire body weight against it, propelled by the momentum of his run.

The door blasted open, splintering the wood of the doorframe, and Steve spun inside, landing in a firing stance, his gun aimed directly at Alan Vernon.

Wendy was behind Vernon, her left arm across his throat, her hand gripping his right shoulder, pinning him in his seat. Her right hand held the syringe, the needle tip already breaking his skin, a rivulet of blood rolling down his arm.

Alan Vernon was her hostage.

"LAPD. Game over, Wendy," Steve said. "You lose."

She licked her lips, her eyes darting around, as if she expected more cops to come crashing through the windows into the room.

"We know all about the game you've been playing with Paul Guyot and the bodies you left behind at Beckman Hospital," Steve said. "We also know about the epinephrine in that syringe."

"One move and he's dead," she said. "I'll empty this into his veins."

"Go ahead." Steve shrugged as if he didn't care, which allowed him to adjust his aim without drawing attention to it. "The paramedics are on the way."

"You better do what I tell you," she said, almost shrieking as her panic grew. "Once I inject this, there's nothing they can do to save him."

"The paramedics aren't for him," Steve said. "They're for you."

He fired in the same instant that he saw the meaning of his words register in her eyes.

The bullet slammed into her right shoulder, the force of the impact throwing her back. As she fell, she pulled Vernon and his chair down with her.

Steve was on her as she hit the floor, kicking the syringe away from her quivering, blood-splattered right hand. She wailed in agony and fury, kicking her feet and squirming like a child having a tantrum, knocking Vernon's chair away.

"You're under arrest for murder," Steve said, keeping his gun trained on her as he quickly read her her rights. When he was done, he glanced at Vernon, who lay on the floor by her feet. Vernon was making strange gasping sounds. "Are you all right, Mr. Vernon?"

"Were you telling the truth about those paramedics?" Vernon asked between gasps.

"No," Steve said.

"Then you better hurry up and call them."

Steve took another look at Vernon, a longer one this time. Vernon was clutching his left arm and grimacing in pain.

"I think I'm having a heart attack," Vernon said.

Mark Sloan sat exhausted on the couch, surrounded by papers, his head swimming with patient names and medical details, none of it gelling into anything substantial. Not only did all the database printouts look the same, but the cases themselves were beginning to blur into one. He was so tired,
everything
was blurring.

He set aside the files and closed his eyes, sliding down and letting his head rest on the top of the couch cushion behind him.

Forget the files, he told himself. Concentrate on the dream for a while instead.

Which dream?

The most recent, Mark decided, the one he'd had last night.

He deconstructed the dream into its most dramatic images. The brain-dead, pregnant nurse in the wedding dress. The twenty-five-year-old medical equipment. His wife, Emily, the pediatric surgeon.

The images were references to, and elaborations upon, similar moments from his coma dream. The new elements were the wedding dress and the twenty-five-year-old equipment.

Twenty-five. Where had that number come from?

Nowhere.

He'd simply assumed the equipment was twenty-five years old.

But why
that
number? Why not eighteen or twenty? Why not twenty-two or twenty-seven?

He tried to recall if the number twenty-five had ever come up in his coma dream.

It had.

It was when he went to see Emily performing the operation to save Susan's unborn child. What was it he'd thought in his dream?

This wouldn't be the first time a brain-dead mother had been kept alive until childbirth. It had been medically possible for decades. He'd done it himself twenty-five years ago.

He remembered the case now. A seven-months-pregnant medical student was seriously injured in a car accident on her honeymoon. Her husband was killed instantly, but she suffered massive head injuries that left her brain-dead.

The parallels to Susan in his dream were obvious. Susan was hit by a car, she was a nurse, and she was recently married. Jesse was dead, and she was left brain-dead.

In the real case, Mark made the difficult decision to keep the newlywed woman alive until the baby came to term.