The Last Word

by Lee Goldberg

  That meant the killer didn’t enter the picture until Wethersby and Adams were already critically injured.

  So were they injected with the virus at the scene or after their arrival at Community General?

  Mark thought about both scenarios, playing them out step by step.

  If the killer was one of the first responders, a cop or a paramedic, he had to carry a syringe of West Nile virus around with him until a potential organ donor showed up.

  The killer would have to quickly determine at the scene if the victim was a registered organ donor and then gamble that the victim would end up brain-dead, as opposed to recovering or simply dying.

  It was a big gamble.

  If the killer guessed wrong, and odds were that he would most of the time, then Mark should be able to find some serious accident victims who later developed West Nile virus symptoms.

  Mark made a note on his pad to check into it, but he had a hunch that he wouldn’t turn up any cases that fit the description—because there was a safer and more dependable way for the killer to work. The killer could wait to strike until the accident victim was declared brain-dead and scheduled for organ harvesting.

  And the killer couldn’t get that information until after the victim had been treated at the hospital and a battery of tests had been done.

  So Mark scratched the notion that the killer was one of the first responders.

  The killer was at Community General.

  No doubt Special Agent Ort had already reached the same conclusion, which was why Mark was considered a suspect, along with a couple hundred other Community General employees.

  Anyone who had access to the ER or the ICU could be the killer.

  But Mark was getting ahead of himself. He realized he’d skipped a crucial question in his thinking.

  Where did the killer get his stash of West Nile virus?

  Mark knew that the cultivation of viruses was a difficult procedure that required specialized knowledge, as well as expensive and highly technical equipment. But there was another, easier way to get the virus: Take it from someone already infected with it. The contaminated blood could be frozen or refrigerated for months without losing its infectivity. The killer would then have the means to infect more people.

  It wouldn’t take much blood.

  Only one tiny vial.

  The killer could easily keep the vial hidden on ice in one of the many refrigerators and freezers in the hospital until a brain-dead organ donor came along.

  And then all he had to do was draw some of the infected blood into a syringe, creep into the ICU, and empty the syringe into the patient’s IV a day or two before the organ harvesting.

  No one would know what had happened until it was too late—when organ recipients all over the country began to die.

  Even then, the deaths would most likely be written off as a freak occurrence, a terrible tragedy.

  Which is exactly what the CDC, Mark, and everybody else would have done, if only it hadn’t happened twice at the same hospital.

  So why did the killer do it again? Didn’t he realize that it was too big a coincidence to be ignored? Or was that the point?

  Mark made a note on his pad: Was it an irresistible compulsion or did the killer want to be noticed? If so, why??

  But there was a far more important question that needed to be answered first. He wrote it down, too.

  Where did the killer get his vial of West Nile-infected blood?

  The killer could have taken the blood from anyone with West Nile virus, regardless of whether they were suffering from mild or extreme symptoms.

  And where was the killer most likely to find someone who had been positively diagnosed with the virus?

  At a hospital.

  And why should the killer look any farther than home?

  Community General.

  Mark got up, went back into the house, and sat down in front of his laptop computer. He logged on to the Community General computer system and began searching for any patients who’d been admitted with confirmed cases of West Nile virus. It wasn’t a common affliction, so he didn’t expect to find many.

  He was right. He found only one.

  Six months earlier, a fifty-five-year-old man had come into the ER suffering from what initially seemed to be a severe case of the flu. But he was soon diagnosed with West Nile virus. He was hospitalized for two weeks and then went home.

  The man’s nurse was Susan.

  A quick check of the records confirmed that she’d also treated organ donors Bruce Wethersby and Corinne Adams.

  And in both cases, Susan’s husband, Dr. Jesse Travis, performed the organ-harvesting surgeries. Susan was right at the center of it all.

  Mark didn’t believe for a second that Susan was the killer, but the circumstantial case against her would be very convincing to someone who didn’t know her as well as he did.

  He could even see a strong case being made that both Jesse and Susan were involved in the tainting of the organs with the virus.

  They both had the medical knowledge, the means, and ample opportunity.

  And there was another fact in their pasts that made the case against them even more damning. They both knew how an organ could be used to kill . . . because they’d seen someone else do it before.

  Jesse and Susan had helped Mark solve a homicide several years ago in which a patient consumed drugs to taint his kidney with a substance that would kill the intended recipient of the organ.

  The case was hardly a secret. Clarke Trotter knew all about it and probably saw the same parallels between it and the current case that Mark did.

  It could be argued that Jesse and Susan had merely improved on a technique that Mark had introduced them to—and instead of killing one person with a tainted organ, they’d found a way to murder many more.

  Mark had no doubt that was exactly the argument that Special Agent William Ort would make.

  Unless Mark caught the real killer first.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Mark called Amanda, Jesse, Susan, and Steve and asked them to come to the beach house right away. He didn’t tell them why. He didn’t have to. They were used to getting calls like that from him. It was his rallying cry, gathering them together to start another investigation.

  What was unusual about Mark’s call this time was that he made a point of asking Susan to come too.

  Although she’d occasionally helped Mark before, homicide investigation wasn’t something she was interested in. Susan only reluctantly got involved when either Mark or Jesse needed her for a specific task, but she was never asked to join in the early stages of one of Mark’s investigations. It made her uneasy.

  Susan shared her feelings with Jesse on their way to Mark’s house. Jesse shrugged off her concern.

  “It just means that Mark already has a plan,” Jesse said, “and you’re part of it.”

  She wanted to believe that Jesse was right, but when they got to Mark’s place, Amanda was just arriving and she appeared startled to see Susan there.

  “I know,” Susan said to Amanda. “I think it’s weird, too.”

  “What are you talking about?” Amanda asked innocently.

  “Me being here,” Susan said.

  “You’re my wife,” Jesse said. “Why shouldn’t you be here?”

  “Because I’m not one of the Superfriends and I don’t want to be,” Susan said. “I don’t usually get summoned with the Bat Signal by the Justice League of America to the big meeting at the Fortress of Solitude.”

  “You’ve got the superhero stuff all mixed up,” Jesse said, shaking his head. “We’re going to have to spend a lot more time watching Cartoon Network together.”

  “Lucky you,” Amanda said to Susan.

  At that point Steve pulled up in his truck, driving too fast and nearly rear-ending Amanda’s Chrysler 300.

  When Steve got out, everything about him seemed askew, as if he’d just emerged from a wind tunnel.

  “What’s the eme
rgency?” he asked.

  “Mark didn’t tell you?” Amanda replied.

  “I was on assignment,” Steve said. “He left me a message on my cell and he paged me. All he said was that it’s an emergency.”

  “Relax. It’s no big deal. The feds are hunting for a serial killer,” Jesse said. “And they think it’s me.”

  “Or me,” Susan said.

  “Or me,” Amanda said.

  “Oh hell,” Steve said with a grimace and led the others into the house.

  They all settled in their usual places around the kitchen table, except for Susan, who waited for everyone to sit before taking a seat beside Jesse. She felt like an uninvited guest, despite everyone’s best efforts to make her feel at home. But whatever discomfort she felt evaporated once Mark started talking. He gave her more important things to worry about.

  Mark began by quickly explaining to Steve everything that had happened, beginning with Wethersby’s bike accident and on through to the meeting that morning.

  He did it for his own benefit, too. Starting at the beginning forced him to review the facts and events again. Sometimes, in the retelling, he saw things he’d overlooked before.

  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen this time.

  When Mark was done, Steve looked slightly dazed by everything he’d heard.

  “How did I miss all that?” Steve asked.

  “You’ve been occupied with the Yokley investigation,” Mark said.

  “I live right downstairs,” Steve said.

  “Where you’ve been occupied with Olivia,” Mark said. “I never found the right moment to talk to you. Besides, until this morning, it was just a medical mystery. There was nothing remotely criminal about it. I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

  “Who is Olivia?” Amanda asked.

  “Steve’s girlfriend,” Mark said.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Steve said. “We’ve just been seeing a lot of each other over the last few weeks.”

  “How did I miss that?” Jesse asked.

  “Because you’ve been occupied with becoming a suspect in a serial killer case,” Susan said. She turned to Mark. “Do you have a plan?”

  Mark shook his head. “I wish I did. At this point, all I really have are some working assumptions.”

  He explained his thinking on the investigation and shared the conclusions that he’d reached, including the likelihood that Jesse and Susan were going to be at the top of Ort’s list of suspects.

  Susan took Jesse’s hand and squeezed it. “I had a feeling this was going to be bad news.”

  “I’m sure this guy Ort isn’t half as smart as Mark,” Jesse said reassuringly. “By the time he gets around to us, we’ll be able to give him the killer. Case closed.”

  Mark appreciated Jesse’s confidence in him, but he didn’t share the young doctor’s optimism or faith in his abilities.

  “I wish you were right, Jesse. But my guess is that Special Agent Ort is already way ahead of me,” Mark said. “We don’t have much time, maybe a day at most, before the FBI comes for one of you.”

  “This is so wrong,” Susan said. “How could the FBI think that we’d kill anyone? Or that we’d be stupid enough to do it in a way that points right back to us? Jesse has been helping you solve murders for years. If he wanted to kill someone, he knows how to do it without getting caught. And so do I.”

  “I don’t think telling the FBI that we could be much better killers than they think we are is really our best defense,” Jesse said. “We might want to come up with something else.”

  “The best defense is to find better suspects,” Mark said. “Whoever we’re after has free access to the entire hospital and can easily get into patient records.”

  “That narrows the field to every doctor, nurse, orderly, and file clerk at Community General,” Amanda said. “The only people you’re leaving out are the patients.”

  “I know,” Mark said grimly. “We can begin by correlating the shift schedules of every employee in every department with the periods when the West Nile virus patients, Wethersby and Adams, were in the hospital.”

  “Getting the information shouldn’t be hard,” Amanda said. “It’s all in the computer. The problem is that it’s an enormous amount of data. We aren’t going to be able to cross-reference everything in just a day.”

  “We have no other choice,” Mark said. “We can log on to the Community General system from here and get right to work.”

  “We also have to find that vial,” Jesse said.

  “Do you have any idea how many refrigerators there are in the hospital?” Amanda asked. “It could take days—and that’s assuming the killer hasn’t removed it by now.”

  “We’ll have to leave that to the FBI and concentrate on a task we have a chance at accomplishing. We’re looking at an allnighter,” Mark said. “But by morning we should have at least a few possible suspects for Steve to check out.”

  “I can’t,” Steve said.

  Everyone turned to look at him. Steve rarely refused to help Mark, and never on a case that involved someone close to them.

  “This is a federal case,” Steve said. “I have no jurisdiction.”

  It was a weak argument, and Mark didn’t buy it. There was something more going on.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Amanda said. “Since when do you care about jurisdiction?”

  “It’s more than that,” Steve said.

  “It better be,” she said pointedly. Mark was thinking the same thing, but he was glad she said it instead of him.

  “This case is going to get a lot of attention from law enforcement and the media,” Steve said. “I can’t risk any of that attention shifting to me.”

  “Are you worried about your career now?” Jesse asked. “That’s a first.”

  “I’m worried about going to jail,” Steve said. He looked at their faces and grimaced. “I shouldn’t be telling you about this, but you’re family, and it’s the only way you’ll understand why I can’t help you now.”

  With that preamble, he reluctantly revealed to them the details of his special assignment from the chief to illegally eavesdrop on Tony Sisk’s telephone conversations relating to his client Carter Sweeney.

  There was a moment of silence while the others processed what Steve had told them. Now they were the ones looking slightly dazed.

  Mark was astonished at the enormous risk Steve was taking on behalf of the chief, a man his son didn’t trust, respect, or particularly like. Then again, the chief was making it easier for Steve to take action against Sweeney, who posed a serious threat to everyone sitting in Mark’s house that day. Steve was putting his career, and his liberty, at stake for them.

  “We really have to talk to one another more,” Mark said.

  “That’s an understatement,” Amanda said, pinning Mark with her gaze. “When were you going to tell us about Carter Sweeney?”

  Mark winced. He realized now that he and Steve had left Amanda, Jesse, and Susan completely in the dark about his strange meeting with Sweeney and the killer’s possible scheme to ignite a gang war in Los Angeles.

  “I didn’t want to worry you,” Mark said.

  “The man dropped a hospital on top of us,” Amanda said. “I think we have a right to decide for ourselves whether we want to worry about him or not.”

  “I’ve got so much to worry about now, I’m having a hard time picking one to focus on,” Jesse said. “Maybe we should make a list.”

  Someone pounded on the front door, and pounded again two seconds later.

  Steve glanced at Mark. “There was a certain urgent, law enforcement authority to that, don’t you think?”

  “I have to agree, considering those Men in Black watching our back door,” Amanda said, motioning behind Mark and Steve to the beach. “In case we try to escape by sea.”

  Mark turned to look. There were three men wearing sunglasses and dark suits standing on the beach behind the house.

  He faced the other
s, the expression on his face conveying what they were all thinking. They had run out of time before they’d even had a chance to begin.

  “I don’t think I’m going to need that list after all,” Jesse said glumly.

  The pounding on the door got more insistent.

  “I’ll get it,” Mark said, rising and crossing to the front door. He opened it, and Special Agent Ort marched in, followed by three other agents. “Come on in.”

  “Having a party?” Ort asked everyone at the table.

  “It’s book club night,” Jesse said. “We’re discussing The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. Did you bring your copy?”

  Susan gave him a scolding glance. His attitude wasn’t helping either one of them.

  Ort glanced at Steve. “Lieutenant Sloan, I’m afraid you are about to find yourself in a very uncomfortable position.”

  “Why?” Steve asked. “Am I under arrest?”

  “No, but your friends are,” Ort said, tipping his head towards Jesse and Susan.

  “Oh my God,” Susan said.

  “Are you going to be a problem?” Ort asked Steve.

  “You bet I am,” Steve said. “But not here and now.”

  “Fair enough.” Ort nodded. “Jesse Travis and Susan Travis, you are under arrest on multiple murder charges. Stand up and place your hands behind your backs.”

  They did as they were told. Susan shared a fearful look with Jesse. “I can’t believe this is happening. I’ve never even had a parking ticket.”

  The two other agents stepped forward, patted Jesse and Susan down, and handcuffed them while Ort read them their rights.

  Even though Mark had known this moment would come, it didn’t make it any easier for him to take. He hated seeing his friends treated this way.

  “You’re making a huge mistake,” he said. “All you have, at best, is circumstantial evidence against them. There are dozens of people at Community General with just as much access to all three patients as they have.”

  “But there are only two with their fingerprints all over the vial of West Nile virus-tainted blood that we found,” Ort said. “It was hidden in a thermos in a refrigerator in the doctors’ lounge.”