Diagnosis Murder 3 - The Shooting Script (14 page)

"Uh-huh," he replied.

"What about her airtight alibi?" Karen said.

"That's the part that makes my theory elaborate and difficult to follow."

"I see," she said. "Has it occurred to you that the Mob might actually be responsible?"

"Nope."

"Even though all the evidence points that way."

Steve nodded. Karen took a deep breath and let it out slowly before she spoke again.

"You think Lacey is guilty because she has a perfect alibi and you think the Mob isn't involved because there's so much evidence of their involvement."

"That pretty much sums up my investigative approach," Steve said. "Can I arrest her now?"

"Oh boy," Karen said, rising from her seat. "This is going to be quite a ride."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Steve came home at midnight to find his father sitting in front of the TV, watching Stryker's video for what was probably the fiftieth time. Steve would have been shocked if Mark had been doing anything else. The video was not only the strongest piece of evidence of Lacey's innocence, it was, at least in his father's mind, absolute proof that she was guilty. And Steve knew his father would keep watching the video until he could find the fault in it.

Unfortunately, there wasn't one.

"There's something wrong with this tape," Mark said, as if reading his son's mind. "I just can't see it."

"If it's any consolation to you, neither could the experts in the crime lab," Steve said. "I was convinced the video had to have been digitally altered in some way. But it checks out. What you see is real."

"Were you able to confirm when it was shot?"

"You were right. The police car in the background was responding to your 911 call," Steve said. "I had some experts check out the weather, the position of the sun, and the angle of the light in the earlier scenes. It's all consistent with the day and hour the film was shot. The time and date stamps are accurate."

"I knew they would be." Mark shut off the television and went out on the deck to get some air. Steve followed him out.

The moon was bright enough so they could see the waves crashing against the shore, and the light breeze off the water brushed their faces with sea mist.

"You okay, Dad?"

"I feel like we're seeing this case from a forced perspective," Mark said. "One meticulously designed by Lacey McClure."

"Forced perspective?" Steve said. "Like the little cardboard airplane and the midgets they used at the end of Casablanca to make the plane in the background look far away when, in fact, it was right behind Bogart?"

"Exactly—but the illusion isn't just used in movies, but in architecture as well," Mark said. "The ancient Greeks made the columns of their buildings slightly smaller at the top to create the illusion of greater height. In Disneyland, Main Street USA is designed to look longer as you enter the park, so you'll hurry in, and shorter as you exit, so you'll linger as you leave. In order for the illusion to work, you have to control how your audience views the environment. Lacey McClure has done an expert job of that on us and I don't like it."

"She didn't figure that the person who found the bodies would be a doctor, or would be clever enough to determine the actual time of death."

"But it hasn't broken the forced perspective," Mark said. "We all still see a distant door at the end of a long hallway, instead of realizing it's actually a tiny door at the end of a very short hallway."

Steve just looked at him. "What door?"

"In other words," Mark said, "she's still getting away with two murders, unless you've uncovered a mistake I don't know about."

"I wish I could say that I have. I've gone through Stryker's files, receipts, and reports," Steve said. "His story checks out. Stryker followed Lacey for a few weeks. He got a lot of shots of her with Titus, but nothing incriminating until their rendezvous at the Slumberland Motel."

"Unfortunately, that's not quite as incriminating as we would like," Mark said. "So what's your next step?"

"In light of Lacey's perfect alibi, and pressure from the media, the incredibly attractive ADA wants me to concentrate on the Mob angle. I'd like to talk to Daddy Crofoot," Steve said. "Though I suspect that after that press conference today, he's going to be a hard man to find."

"You'll find him," Mark said. "He just might not be breathing anymore when you do."

"That would work out well for Lacey, wouldn't it?" Steve said.

"Why do you think she held the press conference?"

Steve studied his father, though it was hard to read his face in the moonlight. "You're not usually this cynical."

"I'm being pragmatic." Mark stared out at the surf. "Lacey McClure knows exactly what she's doing. We're the ones who are lost."

Mark couldn't sleep, tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable. After a few hours, he got up and went to the couch, where he sat in his bathrobe, staring at the dark screen of the TV. He didn't have to turn it on to watch the video again. Stryker's tape was on a feedback loop in Mark's mind, replaying over and over.

It was getting him nowhere, and since he knew sleep was hopeless, he decided to watch another one of Lacey's movies. He decreased the volume to a low hum and watched
Sting of the Scorpion
, with Lacey McClure as an exotic dancer, known as the Scorpion because of the distinctive tattoo on her back. In addition, she's a masked vigilante, also known as the Scorpion, who goes after sexual predators and kills them, usually after luring them into bed first. Despite the fact that the mysterious avenger and the stripper shared the same name, and moved in the same underworld of the sex trade, none of the cops or bad guys in the movie ever made the connection.

Mark finished the movie feeling pretty stupid himself, wondering if there was an obvious connection he wasn't making. He sat in the shadows, wondering. And wondering. The house was very still. The rhythmic crashing of the surf was like the tick of a clock, measuring the slow passing of the hours until morning.

At the first hint of sunrise, Mark showered, dressed, and made a quick breakfast for himself and Steve. They ate in silence, Mark avoiding the newspaper. He didn't need to read any more about Lacey McClure and be reminded that she was not only orchestrating how the investigation unfolded, but was setting the agenda for the media coverage, as well.

Once again, he thought about forced perspective and wished he could figure out how to break Lacey's hold on how he was seeing the case.

He went to the hospital for a few hours, but found himself too tired and distracted to work. He canceled all his appointments, rescheduled his meetings, and went home, claiming to be sick. It wasn't entirely untrue. He was suffering from a troubling affliction—a mystery he couldn't solve.

On his way out, Mark passed Noah Dent, who glared disapprovingly at him.

"Another early day, Dr. Sloan?" Dent asked.

Mark pretended not to hear him and continued on to the parking lot.

The drive home from Community General took him west, through Santa Monica, and then north, up along the Pacific Coast Highway and past the Slumberland Motel. Somehow, on his way to the hospital that morning, the motel had just dissolved into the blur as he drove, and he hadn't even noticed it. But now, stopped at the red light at Kanan Dune Road, he couldn't avoid it.

The Slumberland Motel rested on a narrow shelf carved out of a hillside, tucked into the shadows, and out of view, of the sprawling mansions set back on the hilltop above. Below the motel, just over the edge of its cracked blacktop parking lot, was a deep ravine blanketed with iceplants, clogged with overgrown plumbago bushes, and littered with fast-food garbage tossed from passing cars.

It was hardly a location that inspired romance. But as Mark knew from personal experience, it was a place that people passed without really seeing, which made it a good spot for illicit trysts.

He parked his car across from the last room at the end of the building, looking over his shoulder and backing his car up carefully so he didn't tumble into the ravine. When he turned around and faced forward again, he saw room 16 from roughly the same perspective that Stryker's camera had.

Mark got out of the car and walked to the edge of the parking lot, overlooking the ravine. He could see where Stryker had probably crouched, behind the flowering plumbagos, to get his view of the room. There were several soft-drink cans and potato-chip bags discarded in the brush. If it wasn't Stryker's trash, Mark figured it belonged to some other spy hoping to photograph a lover's betrayal. It was a comfortable hiding place that offered good cover and a clear view of most of the motel. There was even a rough trail through the brush, leading around to the back of the building.

He followed the trail, moving carefully so as not to get too scratched up. The trail ended on a slight rise behind a fenced-in enclosure for the trash bins. From there, Mark could see down into the window of the last room, where the blinds were still only half-closed.

The room was empty, so Mark could keep studying the view without feeling like a Peeping Tom. He noticed that the window frame and the bottom of the blinds created a frame of their own, limiting how much of the room he could see. All he could see was the bed from above and a section of the carpet between the bed and the window. Everything else was blocked by the blinds. He didn't know if that was significant or not, but anything that hinted at a forced perspective nagged at him now. The half-closed blinds didn't change what the camera saw, but it did limit what the camera could see.

Mark stepped out from behind the trash area and went down to the motel-room window, peering in from up close. He saw a sagging bed with a thin, flowered bedspread with a busy pattern meant to camouflage stains. The pattern wasn't busy enough. The carpet was a faded red with the thick, luxurious pile of a napkin. There was a single vinyl armchair, a bathroom, closet, and a door to the adjoining room. If Stryker had been standing right outside the window with his camcorder, Mark wasn't sure it would have changed anything.

He went around to the front of the motel and walked the length of the purple building toward the office at the far end. Along the way, he could hear the urgent, labored moans of people and bedsprings behind the closed doors and drawn blinds.

The office reminded Mark of the waiting area at an automobile repair shop. A single vinyl couch, a coffee table covered with auto magazines, and a soft-drink vending machine. The only thing there that one didn't usually see at an auto mechanic's garage was a condom vending machine. As a doctor, though, he was glad the management of the Slumberland Motel was at least making a token effort at disease prevention. Having seen the bedspread in room 16, he had his doubts.

The paunchy manager wore a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts, and was sitting behind the counter, watching
The Young and the Restless
. He was about sixty, with short, spiky hair held upright by heavy application of a gel with a scent so strong Mark smelled it as soon as he stepped in.

The manager swiveled around on his stool to greet Mark. "May I help you?" he asked, with a faint trace of a Southern accent.

"Yes," Mark replied, flashing his friendliest, most ingratiating smile. "I'm here about a guest who rented room 16 three days ago. His name is Titus Carville, but he might have used a different identity when he checked in."

The manager sighed wearily. "So who are you? The husband, the father, the boyfriend, or the private investigator?"

"None of the above," Mark said. "I'm a doctor."

"I get it," the manager said, holding up a halting hand. "Say no more."

Mark was glad to oblige, since he hadn't figured out what to say next, anyway. Getting information from people who were under absolutely no obligation to give it to him was just one of the difficulties of investigating a murder without any authority whatsoever.

"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink," the manager said, motioning to the condom machine. "I wanted to put one of those little vending machines in each of rooms, but my wife wouldn't go for it. She said it would kill the charm of the place."

"I appreciate your attention to public health," Mark said, almost adding that he'd appreciate it even more if they'd also burn all the bedding.

"What does my wife know about charm? She doesn't see the people who come in here," the manager said. "She doesn't see some of the bizarre combinations either, if you catch my drift. Her thing is the decor. The style. The ambience."

"It is a lovely place," Mark said. "Now, about Titus Carville—"

"We don't get the family or tourist trade anymore. But what we've got is a steady business, we have our niche in the marketplace. But do you know how many times I've been subpoenaed by divorce lawyers to testify?" the manager plowed on, oblivious to Mark's attempt to interject. "You know how many times guys have come in here waving guns and knives at me, looking for their cheating spouses?"

"I can imagine," Mark said. "I'm interested in the room Carville rented and if he's been here before with—"

"Love is a battlefield, as the song says, but I don't need to tell you, do I, Doc? I don't even want to think about what you have to see." The manager opened the check-in register and flipped back a couple of pages. "How many of this guy's sex partners are you and the health department looking for?"

"As many as we can find," Mark said.

The manager turned the book around so Mark could read it. Mark was mildly surprised to see that Titus had checked in under his own name. It didn't show much discretion, but it did help anyone checking up on Lacey's alibi. What he found odd was that Titus had signed twice.

"Why did Mr. Carville sign the register twice?" Mark asked.

"He ended up renting rooms 15 and 16. They're adjoining rooms at the very end of the building," the manager said. "He said that he wanted more privacy, since they liked to

have a very good time and didn't want any complaints about the noise."

"I see," Mark said, digesting this new piece of information. "Has he ever been here before?"