Diagnosis Murder: The Death Merchant

by Lee Goldberg

  Mark felt a chill creep up his back. "He offers them vengeance for a price."

  "He says he'll do what the law won't."

  "Has he?" Mark asked.

  Terry shrugged. "You tell me."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It wasn't easy getting a call through to Roger Standiford. Mark didn't actually succeed, but his message got to the man nonetheless.

  As soon as he got back home, he called Standiford's office. Mark couldn't get past the hotel magnate's impenetrable front line of executive assistants, so he left his name, number, and a simple message: I saw Stuart Appleby die.

  Fifteen minutes later, Mark got a call back offering him an appointment with Standiford at noon the next day. That wouldn't be a problem for Mark. Las Vegas was only a forty-five-minute plane ride from L.A., and flights left from Los Angeles International Airport on an almost hourly basis. Mark made a reservation on the 8:00 A.M. flight and got a return ticket for 8:00 P.M. the same day. He wanted to allow himself plenty of time to talk and snoop around a bit.

  Mark knew he'd find Steve at BBQ Bob's, so he drove over to the restaurant for dinner. Business was light, which disappointed Steve and Jesse, but Mark didn't mind, even though he had some money of his own tied up in the place. The slow night gave him a chance to fill Steve and Jesse in on what he'd learned without too many interruptions for delivering ribs to customers or checking on things in the kitchen. He told them about Danny Royal's true identity, the Standiford kidnapping, and the FBI's suspicion that a professional killer was offering wealthy families vengeance for a price.

  When Mark finished telling them everything, including that he had an afternoon meeting lined up with Roger Standiford, both Steve and Jesse seemed troubled.

  "You're being manipulated," Steve said. "The only reason Riordan told you about the professional killer was so you'd run with it. And you are, just like he knew you would."

  "What does Agent Riordan expect me to do that the FBI can't?" Mark asked.

  "Get in to see Roger Standiford and press him about the contract killer," Steve said. "The Feds haven't made any progress investigating his daughter's kidnapping and murder. Standiford is probably so disgusted with them that he won't let them in the door, and he certainly won't see them to hear accusations that he hired some hit man. But Riordan knew if he teased you with details of the kidnapping and gave you the lead about the hit man, you'd do his job for him."

  "I don't see the downside for me," Mark said.

  "You're being used." Steve said, "Isn't that enough?"

  "Not if it helps me find the other kidnappers before Standiford's hit man does," Mark said. "The FBI is concentrating on backtracking Stuart Appleby's life in Hawaii."

  "Who is Stuart Appleby?" Jesse asked.

  "Danny Royal," Steve said. "Try to keep up."

  "The FBI isn't going to get anywhere following that trail," Mark continued. "Riordan gave me something I could use with Standiford. I have a chance to make some real progress."

  "Which Terry Riordan will find some way to use for his own political benefit in the Bureau," Steve said. "Even if it means screwing you along the way."

  "I don't have anything at stake here," Mark said.

  "I've noticed that," Steve said. "Which is why I keep asking why you're doing this."

  "Because there's a killer out there hunting these kidnappers down, and he's going to murder them one by one unless someone stops him," Mark said. "And it doesn't look like the FBI is up to the task."

  "And you are, Rambo?" Steve asked.

  "I don't intend to do it alone," Mark said. "When I find the kidnappers, I'll call in the authorities to make an arrest. And if I can figure out who the hit man is, I'll do the same thing."

  "Okay, so here's what I don't get," Jesse said. "Who gives a damn?"

  "Excuse me?" Mark asked.

  "Let me see if I got this straight," Jesse said. "Danny Stuart Royal Appleby kidnapped and killed Standiford's daughter and ran off to Hawaii with a million bucks. Standiford hires a hit man who finds Royal Appleby and kills him."

  "That's the working theory," Mark said.

  "So the guy whose murder you're trying to solve was a kidnapper and a killer."

  "Yes," Mark said.

  "Now you want to find the other kidnappers before this hit man finds them and kills them."

  "Yes," Mark said.

  "Why? The police and FBI are on the case, and if they're too late..." Jesse shrugged, letting his voice trail off and his implication hang in the air.

  "You're condoning murder, Jesse."

  "They kidnapped a girl, cut off her pinkie, and buried her alive," Jesse said. "I'm saying no one is going to shed a tear for Danny Stuart Royal Appleby or any of them. The FBI couldn't catch them, so Standiford simply found someone who could."

  "But this guy isn't catching them," Mark said, "he's killing them."

  "Is there any question they're guilty?" Jesse asked.

  "It's still murder," Mark said. "I don't have any sympathy for the kidnappers or killers, but I believe they should be tried, convicted, and punished under the law."

  "And while that is going on, the Standiford family has to relive the tragedy again in excruciating detail and the tax payers have to foot the bill," Jesse said. "Seems to me Standiford is seeing justice gets done."

  Steve studied Jesse. "Have you been watching the Death Wish marathon on channel five again?"

  "I'm just saying it's hard to get worked up over whether these guys live or die," Jesse said. "They're scum."

  "So the rich and powerful get a free pass at murder," Mark said, "as long as the victims deserve what they get."

  "Some might call it justice," Jesse said.

  "Charles Bronson, for instance," Steve added.

  "It isn't justice," Mark said. "Murder is murder."

  "That means as far as you're concerned, the guy who took out Danny Stuart Royal Appleby and is hunting down the others is no better than the people he's after," Jesse said, "and is deserving of the same punishment."

  "It's not as far as I'm concerned, Jesse. It's as far as the law is concerned."

  Jesse looked at Steve. "Does that seem right to you?"

  "Not really," Steve said. "But it's the law, and I guess if we start letting people kill anyone they think is guilty of a crime, where will it end? The American Heart Association can take a contract out on us for the food we serve."

  Jesse narrowed his eyes at Steve. "You've been talking to Amanda."

  Steve jerked his head toward Mark. "Where do you think Amanda gets it?"

  "Speaking of food, I think I'm ready to eat." Mark picked up the menu and scanned it. "What low-fat, high-fiber items do you have on the menu?"

  "Just the menu." Jesse set the salt and pepper shakers in front of Mark and smiled. "Enjoy."

  * * *

  Las Vegas was like an aging starlet hopelessly addicted to plastic surgery. Construction cranes were the only feature of the skyline that never changed.

  The city no longer matched the image its name conjured in Mark Sloan's mind. The Rat Packers were all dead. The Dunes Hotel was blown up for a TV special. High rollers arrived in Lincoln Navigators stuffed with kids. Casinos weren't casinos anymore; they had become "vacation destinations." The hotels were no longer just buildings but rather an urban floor show of performance architecture.

  The romanticized Las Vegas that Mark remembered, if not from experience then from countless movies, would never have included a casino like Roger Standiford's T-Rex, with its gigantic mechanical dinosaurs stomping along the strip out front, roaring their mechanical roars.

  Mark parked his rented Ford beside a dozen other rented Fords in the T-Rex's enormous parking structure and hoped he'd remember that his car was located somewhere in row four of the Triassic Age. He took a steep escalator down through a waterfall to the casino floor, walked past the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex that loomed over the Jurassic Buffet, and approached one of the "reservation consultants" behind the faux chisele
d-stone counter in the cavernlike lobby.

  Five minutes later, Mark was studying the stalactite-styled lights on the ceiling when Nate Grumbo, Standiford's head of security, came to greet him. With his vaguely Neanderthal features, Grumbo could easily have moonlighted as one of the cavemen who battled dinosaurs in the nightly floor show.

  "Good morning, Dr. Sloan. Welcome to the T-Rex." Grumbo's voice sounded as if it came from a throat filled with gravel. "Please come with me."

  Mark followed Grumbo to a private elevator hidden be hind the rain forest foliage of Dinosaur Grotto. Grumbo pressed his meaty paw against some kind of touch screen, which lit up for a moment as it scanned his hand, and then the elevator doors opened with a hiss.

  Grumbo motioned Mark inside the richly paneled mahogany car, a stark contrast to the garish prehistoric decor of the rest of T-Rex. As the elevator car ascended, Mark glanced up and noticed a tiny camera aimed at him with the same undivided intensity as Grumbo's cold gaze.

  Mark then noticed narrow beams of laser light moving between the slats of wood paneling, crisscrossing his body in a rapid, gridlike pattern. He assumed he was being searched, x-rayed, and scanned for weapons, electronic devices, biological agents, and maybe even smuggled snacks. If they tried to take away his protein bar, he'd say he didn't see the signs that said NO OUTSIDE FOOD ALLOWED, which would be the truth.

  He smiled amiably at Grumbo. "Tight security you have here."

  "It's necessary," Grumbo said.

  "Yes, I suppose it is," he said, just to be saying something. Grumbo's stony silence was unnerving, which, Mark supposed, it was intended to be.

  Something beeped in Grumbo's jacket. He reached into his pocket, glanced at something that looked like a PDA, and then put it away.

  "Could I have the cell phone that's in the inside breast pocket of your jacket?" Grumbo said, no doubt specifying which pocket to impress Mark with the invasiveness of the security measures. "It will be returned to you when you leave."

  Mark reached into his jacket, pulled out his slim cell phone, and gave it to Grumbo, who looked at it for a moment as if he was trying to decided whether to crush it or eat it, then put it in his pocket instead.

  The elevator doors opened to a huge outer office that was overwhelming in its open space and sparse furnishings. The room was a vast oval with a two-story-high curved ceiling. There were three assistants working at their ovoid desks, spaced far apart from one another. The walls were almost concave, off-white, and unadorned with any art. Two slanted, steel-and-leather chairs, shaped as if they were about to pounce, were arranged in the center of the room. The floor was marble, and as Mark and Grumbo walked across the expanse their footsteps echoed through the space, somehow making it seem even larger.

  The outer office felt like something out of an early James Bond movie, one of those volcano bases the cat-stroking villains liked so much. Mark wondered if the similarities were intentional, and decided they had to be.

  Grumbo led him toward an enormous pair of double doors that opened into Standiford's office as they approached.

  After everything he'd seen so far, Mark expected Roger Standiford to be a man as garish, aggressive, and obnoxious as his buildings, but he was wrong. Standiford had a deep, even tan and was dressed casually in slacks and a monogrammed silk shirt. He smiled warmly at Mark and walked toward his guest with a casual, friendly gait that seemed wrong against the grandiose design of his office, which was almost entirely made of glass, giving him a commanding view of the entire city from his desk, a steel-and-glass work of contemporary art.

  "It's a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Sloan." Standiford shook

  Mark's hand and led him to a pair of facing chairs identical to those in the outer office. As Mark sat down, he realized that somehow Grumbo had silently slipped out and closed the doors behind him, leaving the two men alone.

  "I've done some reading up on you and the astonishing number of homicides you've solved," Standiford said. "You're a remarkable man."

  "I'm afraid I haven't read much about you," Mark said. "But you have quite an office here, so I assume you're doing well. I have to ask, though... With a desk like that, where do you put your paper clips and breath mints and little sticky pads?"

  "I see you're not a man who's easily intimidated," Standiford said. "Or impressed."

  "That's not true. I met a lady a few months ago who swam in the freezing water off Antarctica wearing only a regular bathing suit and cap. Anybody else would have died of hypothermia in minutes, but she can swim for hours in intensely cold waters without any ill effects. She's one of only two people we know of on earth who can do that. I was impressed with her abilities and intimidated by how much more there is to learn about the human body than we already know."

  "I'm sure there's a moral in there somewhere, but it's lost on me," Standiford said. "I'd rather hear about the guy you met who swam in much warmer waters."

  "You mean Danny Royal. I was vacationing in Kauai with my son when I met him on the beach," Mark said. "He'd been stung by some jellyfish during his daily swim. I helped him, and he invited us to dinner at his restaurant. The next day I was on the crowded beach when he took his swim and I saw him get attacked by a shark."

  "What happened?" Standiford said.

  "I saw a fin in the water behind him, then he was pulled under," Mark said. "There was a lot of splashing, a lot of blood, and panic on the beach. It was like a scene out Jaws. In fact, it was exactly like that. It was totally make-believe."

  "You seem to be the only one who thinks so," Standiford said. "They closed beaches. People are afraid to go in the water. The newspapers say it was a particularly vicious tiger shark."

  "What they don't say is that the blood was fake," Mark said. "And that Danny Royal was dead before he was attacked. They also don't mention his real name was Stuart Appleby and five years ago he killed your only daughter. They don't want to alert the killer that they are on to him, but I'm certain he'll know very soon."

  Standiford met Mark's gaze. "You're certain it was Appleby."

  Mark nodded. Standiford's face betrayed nothing. A perfect poker face for a man who made his living off people who played cards.

  "I guess I've made it a lot easier for your man," Mark said.

  "My man?" Standiford said.

  "The guy you hired to hunt down and kill Appleby and the others," Mark said. "Now he doesn't have to prove to you that he got the right guy. I've done that for him."

  "Do you expect me to feel sorry for Appleby? After what he did to my daughter? To my life?"

  "No," Mark said.

  "All I want is for justice to be done."

  "Then you won't mind giving me the same information you gave your man."

  "I don't understand."

  Mark sighed. "You've screened me for listening devices and I'm sure this office is secure, so let's be honest, shall we? It's just the two of us here."

  Standiford just looked at him, so Mark went on.

  "Let me see if I can guess what happened. A year or so after the murder, when the FBI investigation had stalled, you were approached indirectly by someone who offered to find the kidnappers and make them pay. He told you that no one would ever know they'd been dealt with except you. He told you it would take a lot of time, but he would be relentless. All you had to do was wire a large sum of money to an off shore account somewhere, then more when the assignment was successfully completed."

  "Do you know what they did to my daughter, Dr. Sloan?" Standiford asked. Mark nodded. "They didn't just kill Connie, they terrorized and tortured her. And after she was dead, the torture didn't end. My wife was haunted by what happened. She tried to kill herself twice. First Emily blamed herself for what happened, then she blamed me. Our marriage disintegrated."

  "I'm not defending the killers or what they did," Mark said.

  "Then what the hell are you doing, Dr. Sloan?"

  "I want the same thing you do," Mark said. "I want justice. There doesn't need to be any more
killing for that to happen."

  "I won't help you go after him," Standiford said.

  "Because you don't want to be charged as an accessory to murder."

  "Because I don't think what he's doing is wrong."

  "Fair enough," Mark said. "But you know who I am and what I can do. If it's justice instead of vengeance that really motivates you, you'll help me find Diane Love, William Gregson, and Jason Brennan before he does."

  "What difference does it make to you?" Standiford said. "Did you know my daughter? Do you know the people who killed her?"

  Mark shook his head. "I was on the beach when Appleby was murdered. I want to be sure innocent people don't get hurt."

  "He doesn't work that way," Standiford said. "He never kills an innocent."

  "If I hadn't been there, he would have," Mark said. "There was a panic. People ran out of the water in terror. One man was slammed against the rocks by the waves and nearly bled to death. There were kids on that beach who will be traumatized forever by what they think they saw. They did nothing to you or your family. Is that your idea of justice, Mr. Standiford?"

  He studied Mark for a time, then stood up slowly. "Mr. Grumbo will give you everything we have on the kidnappers."

  Standiford turned his back on Mark and focused his gaze out at his unobstructed view of the city.

  The meeting was over. Mark got up and headed for the door, which opened automatically as he approached it to re veal Grumbo facing him on the other side. Just as Mark stepped through the doorway, Standiford looked over his shoulder.

  "Where were you five years ago, Dr. Sloan?"

  Mark turned as the doors closed. In his final glimpse of Standiford, Mark saw an expression of such startling anguish and pain on his face, he was certain the next thing he'd hear was the scream of a man leaping to his death.

  But there was no scream; it died inside Roger Standiford, along with everything else.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Roger Standiford was still standing at the window when Nate Grumbo returned to the office twenty minutes later.

  "Did you give Dr. Sloan the files?" Standiford asked.