The Last Word

by Lee Goldberg

  “Then I don’t see what you’re so worried about.”

  “This,” Burnside said, and slammed his fist down on the photograph. “So far, the press doesn’t know anything about Sweeney’s habeas corpus hearing. They will. But when it comes out, and how it comes out, will determine whether it’s a front-page story or a one-paragraph filler buried in the back pages.”

  “I don’t know what they were talking about, but I’m sure it has nothing to do with this election. My father isn’t interested in politics.”

  Steve resented Mark for putting him in this position. Had Mark really thought he could talk to Carter Sweeney without anyone finding out about it?

  Burnside studied Steve for a long moment. “Is this some stunt that Chief Masters has cooked up? Is he using your father as his go-between? Because if he is, he’s going to look pretty damn stupid getting in bed with a serial killer just to smear me.”

  Steve sighed. “My father doesn’t like the chief any better than he likes you. When the chief finds out about this prison chat, I wouldn’t be surprised if he accuses my father of working behind the scenes on your behalf.”

  “What possible reason would your father have for aligning himself with me?”

  “That’s a good question. But I’m sure the chief realizes that if it wasn’t for the Stryker blackmail files that my dad handed to you, and all the high-profile prosecutions and publicity that came from that case, you wouldn’t be a serious contender in the mayor’s race.”

  “Oh, so that’s the game.” Burnside rose from his desk and pointed a finger at Steve. “I don’t owe Mark Sloan a goddamn thing. He can’t use Carter Sweeney to leverage any kind of influence with me. You tell him that.”

  Steve shook his head. “You’re paranoid.”

  “I’m the next mayor of Los Angeles,” he said. “Now get the hell out of my office. You might want to think about moving to another city while you’re at it. This isn’t going to be a very pleasant place for you and your father to live anymore.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Steve and Jesse were both forty-eight hours away from leading major operations in which the slightest miscalculation could cost lives. So, naturally, there was only one thing they could do to prepare: They gorged themselves on barbecue.

  They met Mark and Susan for dinner at Barbeque Bob’s, the restaurant that Steve and Jesse had bought several years back when the original owner retired. The two of them shared the responsibility of running the place, arranging their work schedules so that one of them was there most of the time. And when one of them couldn’t be there, they could always count on Susan to take up the slack.

  The restaurant was still the run-down, ramshackle dive it had always been when Steve and Jesse were its best customers. The Formica countertops were chipped, the vinyl on the stools was cracked, and the tables were covered with names and drawings crudely carved into the wood with knives and forks.

  Despite the pressure on them, Steve and Jesse were in a festive mood, eating ribs and pie, running the grill in the kitchen, delivering orders, and cheerfully hobnobbing with the customers.

  Susan stayed in the booth with Mark. She was trying not to be too obvious about her concern for him, but he saw the way she was sneaking looks at him.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “You can stop looking at me like that.”

  “Are you worried about the transplant surgery?”

  “No,” Mark said. “Jesse has done a great job arranging everything, and the surgeons he’s got lined up are top-notch. It will go smoothly.”

  “Are you worried about the raid?”

  “Steve has taken bigger risks with far less preparation and backup before,” Mark said. “He’s in more danger just crossing the street.”

  “Then it must be the severance package that’s on your mind.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “You dropped it off with some charts at the nurses’ station,” she said, reaching into her purse and passing the paper to Mark.

  “I guess I was a little distracted today,” he said, pocketing the offer. “It’s a good thing you found it. Did you read it?”

  She nodded guiltily. “You and Jesse have been a bad influence on me. It’s a generous deal.”

  “So they keep telling me,” he said ruefully.

  “The fact that you even kept the document means you’re actually considering their offer.”

  “There’s no harm in that,” he said.

  “There was a time you would never even have looked at it. You would have just walked away from the table and left it behind.”

  “Times change.”

  “You’ve been at Community General for over forty years,” she said. “It’s part of you. Do you really think you can leave?”

  “I’ve been feeling restless and uneasy for a while now,” he said. “It’s been worse since the accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident, Mark. Someone tried to kill you. That’s enough to make any sane person restless and uneasy,” she said. “Maybe what you should give up is homicide investigation. None of your patients has ever tried to whack you.”

  “Because I’m so lovable and avuncular.”

  “That hasn’t stopped the killers from trying to murder you.”

  “That’s because killing is what they do, whether or not you’re lovable and avuncular.”

  “Does Steve know about this?”

  Mark shook his head. “There’s nothing to talk about until I get some idea of what I want to do.”

  “Who says you have to do anything? You can keep on going the way you are. Or you can take a long sabbatical to figure stuff out. Or you could simply retire and enjoy the good life.”

  “You make it seem like I have a world of possibilities.”

  “You do,” she said. “More than most people have. Embrace it.”

  Mark looked at Jesse at the cash register, cheerfully ringing up an order for a satisfied BBQ-sauce-splattered customer. And then he glanced over at Steve, who was happily delivering a heaping platter of ribs to a table of eager diners.

  “I could always work here,” Mark said.

  “Now you’re talking,” Susan said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Steve didn’t bring up his conversation with Neal Burnside to Mark until they were walking in the door of the beach house.

  “How’s our good friend Carter Sweeney enjoying his stay at Sunrise Valley?”

  Mark looked at his son. “How long have you known about my visit?”

  “Neal Burnside told me about it tonight before dinner.”

  Mark nodded and went into the kitchen to make them both some hot tea. He didn’t really want tea, but it gave him something to do to avoid a direct confrontation with his son.

  “When were you going to tell me about it?” Steve asked.

  “I wasn’t.”

  As Mark prepared their tea, he told Steve about the call from Sweeney’s lawyer and the details of their conversation.

  By the time Mark was done with his story, they were sitting outside on the deck sipping their tea and watching the waves crash, the frothy white surf glowing in the moonlight.

  “Why weren’t you going to tell me?” Steve asked.

  “Because I was ashamed of how easily I let myself be manipulated by him. I’m a slave to my own curiosity.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself.”

  “I can’t help but feel that I’ve done exactly what he wanted me to do and that Burnside’s reaction was part of his plan, too.”

  “What’s his plan?”

  “I don’t know,” Mark said. “But whatever it is, I’m already playing my part.”

  “Then so am I,” Steve said.

  “What do you think he’s up to?” Mark asked.

  Steve finished his tea and watched the sea breeze fan the dune grass. It reminded him of a girlfriend he hadn’t thought about in twenty years. She had long blond hair and she liked to let the wind blow through it. Her name was Natal
ie or Naomi or something like that. She’d said she loved him and he’d pretended that he hadn’t heard her.

  “He’s powerless and forgotten in prison. So he’s using this hearing, his final moment in the outside world, to do as much damage as he can,” Steve said. “Burnside is right, Sweeney is going to throw a grenade into the mayor’s race and hope as many of his enemies get fragged in the blast as possible. The thing is, I don’t see what damage he can do.”

  “That’s what scares me,” Mark said. “I can’t see it either.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The harvesting of Corinne Adams’s internal organs began at six a.m. in Operating Room #1. Dr. Jesse Travis led the surgical team that spent the next several hours removing her kidneys and liver. Mark watched it all from the observation room, along with a standing-room-only crowd of curious surgical residents.

  It was an emotionally difficult operation for Jesse, who, like all doctors, had taken the Hippocratic oath, to “first do no harm.” Gutting this patient of her vital organs was definitely doing her harm, brain-dead or not. And yet, even as Jesse was ensuring her doom, he had to keep her alive on the operating table long enough for her heart and lungs to be plundered.

  Jesse knew Corinne was brain-dead, and that her organs would save lives, but he still felt as if he was doing something wrong as he sliced open her belly, tied off the veins and arteries leading to her kidneys, and removed the organs.

  Susan and her team of nurses packed the organs in saline and ice and put them in ice chests, which were labeled with the names of their intended recipients. The ice chests were then handed to couriers, who hurried off to personally deliver the organs to desperate patients in San Francisco and Phoenix.

  Meanwhile, Jesse extracted Corinne’s liver and divided it into three parts, like cuts of beef. The three liver sections were then packaged and sent by couriers to hospitals in Seattle, Houston, and San Diego.

  Jesse’s work was done. He stepped aside and heart surgeon David Carren took over. Dr. Carren had the unenviable task of killing Corinne Adams by removing her heart and lungs.

  Jesse had trouble rationalizing his actions with the vow to first do no harm, so he couldn’t imagine the ethical and emotional conflict Dr. Carren had to be dealing with. Then again, perhaps Dr. Carren had made his peace with such surgeries long ago. Jesse didn’t know, and he certainly wasn’t going to ask now.

  Dr. Carren worked with precision, carefully timing his procedures so that the heart and lungs were kept “alive” until the last possible moment.

  Once they had been removed, Jesse delivered the organs to an adjoining operating room, where thirty-five-year-old Ken Hoffman was waiting with his chest cracked wide open and heart surgeon Larry Carroll and his team were standing by.

  Dr. Carroll would have to perform a delicate balancing act, removing one set of heart and lungs and implanting another without killing his patient in the process. And he had to do it all while watching the clock. The donor heart and lungs would remain viable for only a few hours.

  He was methodical and coolheaded, and he insisted on doing the New York Times crossword puzzle aloud while he worked, giving answers to a nurse whose only responsibility was to query him with questions like “What’s a seven-letter word for an element named after a mythical queen?” Mark had to resist the temptation to yell out “Niobium” from the observation room.

  While Dr. Carroll raced against time to perform his medical miracle and complete the crossword, Susan wheeled Corinne’s gutted corpse down to the pathology lab, where Dr. Amanda Bentley took over the final steps in the organ-donor process.

  First, Amanda performed a brain autopsy, confirming Corinne’s medical condition prior to her death on the operating table. There wasn’t much else to base the autopsy on, considering that most of Corinne’s vital organs were on their way to cities all over the West Coast. But Amanda took tissue and fluid samples and then began the grim, solitary task of dismantling Corinne Adams.

  Unlike Jesse, Amanda had no ethical or moral qualms about her work. It was much like a full autopsy, but much more extreme and far less wasteful. These body parts weren’t going to be buried or incinerated.

  Amanda cut, pulled, and peeled away almost everything. Bones. Tendons. Vertebrae. Ligaments. Corneas. Fingernails. Skin. She took all that from Corinne and more, logging and packing everything for shipment to MediSolutions International, the Phoenix tissue-processing company that would dole out the body parts for a wide variety of uses, from orthopedic reconstruction and cosmetic surgeries to medical testing and training.

  By the end of the day, there was very little left of Corinne for cremation. The rest of her, the bulk of her corporeal self, would live on in dozens of other people who didn’t even know her.

  If it was fate that determined Corinne Adams’s demise, then fate also had a wicked sense of timing. The mortuary came to get Corinne’s body at the exact same moment that Federal Express showed up to pick up the packages that contained her bones and tissues.

  Mark strode smiling into the path lab just as the mortician wheeled the body bag out on a gurney and the FedEx guy hauled his packages away on a hand truck.

  The three of them nearly collided in the doorway.

  Mark politely sidestepped the mortician and the FedEx guy and let them pass. He was completely unaware that the men were carrying away all that remained of Corinne Adams.

  But her role in Mark Sloan’s life was only just beginning. Fate wasn’t finished with either one of them yet.

  “The heart-lung transplant was completed without a problem,” Mark said. “And the patient is doing remarkably well.”

  “That was the easy part,” Amanda said. “The big question is whether or not Dr. Carroll finished his crossword puzzle.”

  “I had to scrub in and give him an assist,” Mark admitted.

  “What stumped him?”

  “A fifteen-letter phrase for ‘frustration.’ ”

  Amanda thought for a moment. “ ‘Tear one’s hair out.’ ”

  “You should have been a heart surgeon,” Mark said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  While the doctors at Community General were raiding Corinne Adams’s body, a multi-agency law enforcement strike force was simultaneously raiding Gaylord Yokley’s home and office.

  Steve Sloan and Olivia Morales led the raid on Yokley’s house because they assumed that was where his weapons were most likely stashed. The two detectives wanted to be where the real action was.

  The raid went off exactly as planned, taking place after Bette Yokley left the house to drive her kids to school. Gaylord Yokley was nabbed without incident as he walked to his Escalade.

  Gaylord seemed relaxed, almost resigned to what was happening, as if he’d imagined it already a thousand times before. He was Mirandized, handcuffed, and taken to a holding cell downtown while the search of his 4,800-square-foot house and two detached garages was conducted.

  At first glance, Steve didn’t see anything unusual about the home or its furnishings. It appeared to be the home of a typical family. Report cards and vacation photos were taped to the door of the refrigerator. PlayStation cartridges were scattered on the coffee table in the den. Car magazines and old issues of Vanity Fair were collected in a basket beside the toilet in the master bathroom.

  Home sweet home.

  In the initial sweep, a gun was found in a nightstand drawer in the master bedroom and another in a box on the top shelf of the kitchen pantry. Both weapons were legally registered to Bette Yokley.

  But things got a lot more interesting once Steve and the other officers and agents began emptying the closets. They discovered false walls that hid automatic weapons, semi-automatic weapons, rifles, and handguns.

  That was only in the closets.

  Steve took a broom from the pantry, turned it upside down, and tapped the kitchen floor with the handle, listening for a hollow echo that would indicate a space under the tiles.

  He motioned to an officer with
a sledgehammer. All it took was two whacks of the sledgehammer to break away the travertine and reveal row after row of rifles, neatly laid out side by side.

  Olivia looked at the cache of weapons at Steve’s feet. “We’re going to need another truck.”

  Steve picked up a sledgehammer and swung it at the nearest wall, smashing the plaster away until the studs were revealed, along with the handguns stuffed in the spaces between them.

  “Better make that two trucks,” Steve said.

  “Who knew guns made such good insulation?” Olivia asked.

  Steve wandered into the den and examined the bookcase. None of the books looked like they’d ever been opened. They were missing their dust jackets and seemed to have been picked by a decorator for their size and color. He tried to take a book off the shelf and discovered it was glued in place.

  On a hunch, he grabbed the edge of the bookcase and pulled. The entire bookcase swung open like a vault door, revealing a deep, cinder-block-walled room with a target taped to the far end. The floor was covered with spent shells. It was a hidden shooting range.

  “Unbelievable,” Olivia muttered.

  Steve looked over his shoulder at her. “You must live in an old house. Family rooms are history. Indoor shooting ranges are the newest thing.”

  “Nothing brings a family together like shooting AK-47s,” Olivia said.

  “Makes you wonder what Yokley’s kids have in their school lockers,” Steve said.

  “I’m not going to wonder,” Olivia said. “I’m going to get search warrants and find out.”

  The search of Yokley’s home went on well into the late afternoon. By the time it was done, the multi-agency strike force had recovered 1,372 weapons, from AK-47s to Uzis, as well as a dozen hand grenades and ten pounds of C4 explosive. The weapons and explosives were hidden all over the house, under floors, behind walls, and in secret compartments in the furniture. The tally didn’t include the ammunition, scopes, silencers, and other assorted “accessories” that were also found in various hidden cubbyholes.