Diagnosis Murder 6 - The Dead Letter (16 page)

Mark was sweating, his back stiff and tense with concentration and anxiety. He found himself wishing he'd taken Uncle Cletus on as a driver after all.

Every so often, as he slowly negotiated a harrowing switchback, he would see the rusted and charred wreckage of cars and trucks at the bottom of the ravine. The wrecks lay there, hundreds of feet below the road, tangled in the mountainous brush like the bleached bones of long-dead animals or embedded amidst the boulders like exposed fossils.

It made his throat go dry.

Mark was so intent on his driving that he almost missed the trading post ruins that marked the top of the unpaved road down to where Pelz lived. The footings were made of native stone, and he easily could have mistaken them for a natural outcropping if he hadn't known what to look for.

He took the turn and bounced along the rutted, rock-strewn road until he finally emerged into a clearing surrounded by saguaro cactus.

Pelz's compound was a ragged collection of weather beaten, rusted-out mobile homes joined together by corrugated metal breezeways and shacks, apparently built from materials salvaged from the ruins of other buildings. The hulks of several old Cadillacs were lined up behind a giant satellite dish like silent sentries, their hoods raised in salute, their engines long since gutted for parts. A five-year-old Cadillac, a Frankenstein of Caddy parts covered in dirt and dents and someday destined to join its organ donors, was parked in front of one of the mobile homes.

Mark parked beside the Caddystein and got out, relieved to finally be off the treacherous road. It was hard for him to believe it could ever have been part of Route 66, much less the principal highway into California. He dreaded the rest of the drive back to the interstate beyond Oatman.

He took a deep breath of fresh Arizona desert air and immediately wished he hadn't. His stomach recoiled, and he coughed the breath right back out of his lungs, nearly bringing his lunch up with it.

The air was heavy with the sickening scent of decaying flesh. It was the scent of death.

Mark turned apprehensively towards the mobile home, knowing what he would find inside. Holding a handkerchief to his nose, he walked up to the screen door without bothering to knock or announce his presence.

The door opened with a mournful, agonized creak, as if he was causing the old mobile home pain, stretching muscles and tendons instead of rusted hinges. He stepped inside, startling a thousand flies and sending them buzzing all around him.

Mark swatted them away and examined his cramped surroundings. There were currency reference books and pricing guides going back years lined up on the kitchen counter. There were stacks of yellowed currency auction catalogs and back issues of the
Bank Note Reporter
along the walls and on the dinette table. He guessed that this mobile home served as Pelz's office and that one of the others must be his living quarters.

As he neared what had once served as the master bedroom he saw a man, facedown on the floor, his body grotesquely bloated from decomposition, a bullet hole in the back of his head.

Mark crouched beside the body and turned the man's head so he could see his face. It wasn't Stryker. The man was in his late fifties, his nose was bulbous, red, and looked like a cauliflower. The dead man had suffered from rhinophyma, a disfiguring skin ailment exacerbated by alcohol consumption.

Using his handkerchief, he reached gingerly into the dead man's back pocket, pulled out his wallet, and glanced at the Arizona driver's license.

The dead man was Pelz. And judging by the degree of decomposition, Mark figured he was killed around the same time that Stryker disappeared. He sorted through the rest of the wallet's contents: a hundred dollars in crumpled bills, several phone cards, and a single credit card.

Mark jotted down the account numbers of all the cards on a piece of paper and slipped the wallet back in Pelz's pocket. And then he stood there, trying to decide what to do next.

The murder of Sanford Pelz, perhaps on the same day that Stryker was killed, raised all kinds of troubling questions, none of which Mark was prepared to deal with at the moment.

He thought about searching the office, but what would he be looking for?

A phone would be a start.

After a few minutes of looking around, though, he concluded that Pelz didn't have a phone, at least not in his office. So he took out his cell phone and tried to call 911, but he couldn't get a signal.

Now Mark understood why Pelz had so many phone cards in his wallet; he used them when he went to town to make his calls.

Mark would have to drive to Oatman and notify the authorities there. That was fine with him. He couldn't wait to leave.

He took one more quick glance around the place to make sure he wasn't missing any vital clues, then hurried out—not that time was of the essence. Pelz wouldn't be getting any less dead.

The urgency Mark felt was the need to escape, to get as far away from the violence and the rot as he could. He'd seen a lot of corpses in his life, so that wasn't what disturbed him. It was. this place, the desolation of it, and the omnipresent sense of doom around each hairpin turn.

Mark got into his car and drove away, careful not to give in to the urge to speed. Hurrying along this road could be fatal.

He returned to the main road and headed west, into the setting sun, which made the dangerous drive even more harrowing. His sunglasses weren't much help against the glare, and he was afraid to lower his visor for fear of critically limiting his view.

The road became even narrower and curvier than it had been before. As he was making yet another unexpectedly sharp turn, a flash of light stabbed him in the eyes. He slammed his foot on the brake pedal in surprise and nearly lost control of the car, which came to a screeching, rubber-peeling stop at the edge of the cliff.

Breathing hard, his heart pounding, Mark looked back to see what had caused the reflection that nearly killed him.

At the edge of the curve, at the perfect angle to catch the light of the setting sun, was what appeared to be a bright silver propeller about the size of a large pizza. It took Mark a minute to figure out that it was a spinner ripped from the rim of someone's tires. The driver had probably shaved the exposed, craggy face of the rocky mountainside while negotiating the tight turn.

That had to hurt. Steve had looked into getting a set of rims with spinners for his truck, and Mark knew they could cost thousands of dollars. Whoever lost the spinner must have been pretty upset when he reached the interstate—but not enough to brave a return trip up Bloody 66 to retrieve it.

Mark got out of the car, surprised that his legs were shaking, and went over to get the spinner. He didn't want anyone else to be blinded by it. As he leaned over to pick it up, he saw dozens of skid marks on the asphalt. One of them was surely his own.

At the same moment, he remembered something Serena Cale had said to him in Capitola.

"Nick showed me his ride. A tricked-out Escalade with chrome spinners on the rims."

Stryker's last call was to Pelz. His last purchase was in Victorville. And he'd been missing about as long as Pelz appeared to have been dead.

With growing trepidation, Mark followed a set of skid marks to the edge of the cliff and peered over the side into the ravine below.

There was a trail of freshly scraped dirt, flattened scrub, amputated cacti, and dislodged rocks that stretched for fifty yards. And at the bottom of that trail was an Escalade SUV, crumpled like a discarded soda can amidst the boulders.

Mark ran back to his car, tossed the spinner inside, and grabbed his medical bag. As an afterthought, he also brought his portable earthquake kit, a large backpack that contained first-aid supplies, nonperishable food, bottled water, running shoes, flashlights, batteries, a folded tarp, duct tape, rope, and an assortment of other survival essentials. Like many Los Angelenos, he had earthquake kits at home, in his car, and at his office.

It took him a few minutes to find a place where he could reasonably attempt to get down the ravine without killing himself, and then he spent nearly an hour carefully working his way down, losing the daylight. He flicked on a flashlight and continued on, slipping several times in the darkness and sliding into the thorny brush, but he made it safely to the bottom with only a few scratches.

He swept the beam of his flashlight over the wreckage. The Escalade had been nearly flattened by its end over end tumble down the cliff. As he got closer, he could see the SUV was resting at an angle against several boulders, creating a cave underneath it.

Mark aimed his light into the space under the SUV and saw the body of a man, his clothes torn and blood-splattered. He took off his backpack and crawled inside.

The man was Nick Stryker. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, his lips cracked and bloody from dehydration, but he was alive.

Mark opened Stryker's shirt and in the glow of the flash light saw blue-purple discoloration on each flank and around his belly button, indicating a broken pelvis and internal bleeding. Stryker's left leg was badly lacerated and, judging by the purple skin and swollen calf, he'd broken his fibula.

Those injuries were the least of Stryker's problems. Over the last five days, Stryker must have endured severe thirst, crippling fatigue, excruciating muscle cramps, and lapses into delirium from the blood loss and dehydration. Even the simple act of breathing robbed his body of water.

Mark assumed that he was dangerously close to kidney failure, perhaps only hours away from lapsing into a coma and dying.

He checked Stryker's neck and head for injuries and felt a drop of water hit his cheek. Stryker had dragged himself underneath the cracked windshield wiper reservoir. Soapy water was, Mark supposed, better than no water at all.

"Nick, can you hear me? It's Dr. Mark Sloan."

Stryker groaned, which was about the best response Mark could have hoped for. At least he wasn't in a coma yet.

"You're going to be all right," Mark said. He didn't know if Stryker could hear him, but he figured some reassurance never hurt. "I'm going to help you."

Mark reached for his backpack, unzip and removed the bottled water. He held it to Stryker's lips and poured. As soon as the moisture touched his lips, Stryker reflexively opened his mouth and greedily sucked in the water.

"Easy. There's plenty more where that came from."

He let Stryker have only a little water. Too much, and Stryker would vomit, worsening his dehydration. He moistened a towel and considered his next move as he gently dabbed Stryker's face.

There was no signal, so calling for help on his cell phone was impossible.

He couldn't carry Stryker back up to the car himself and, even if he could have, it was too dangerous.

There was really only one thing he could do: Stabilize Stryker as best he could and leave him behind, climb back up the bill, and drive to Oatman for help.

Stryker would just have to hang on for a few more hours.

Mark cleaned and disinfected Stryker's wounds, then began looking around the wreckage in the bright moonlight for the materials he needed.

He used some foam padding from the car seats, hard plastic from the door panels, and duct tape from his earthquake kit to fashion a splint for Stryker's leg.

He was giving Stryker another sip of water before leaving when he heard the growl of an engine on the road above.

And then he remembered his car. He'd left it parked on the road, on the blind side of the tight curve.

In the dark.

Mark scrambled out from under the Escalade in time to see a motor home rounding the curve too fast and smashing into the rear of his Mini Cooper, launching the small car off the cliff.

Directly at him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Everything happened within seconds, but for Mark Sloan, everything slowed to a crawl. He dove back under the Escalade, grabbed Stryker by the ankles, and dragged him away as fast as he could.

At the same moment, Mark's car smacked into the hillside and careened towards them in a wave of dirt, rocks, and scrub.

Stryker's screams of agony were drowned out by the earthshaking thunderclap as Mark's car plowed into the Escalade and exploded in a roiling fireball that punched into the night sky like a coiled, flaming fist.

Mark fell backwards, losing his grip on Stryker and hitting the ground hard. He rose shakily to his feet to see the two vehicles consumed by flames. Through the black smoke, he could see people standing illuminated in the glow of the headlights of their motor home, looking down at the flames.

He checked on Stryker, who was moaning pitifully. At least he was still alive.

Mark stepped clear of the smoke and yelled to the people on the road.

"Is anyone up there hurt?" he yelled.

A grizzled old man wearing an eye patch and cowboy boots hobbled to the cliff's edge. Behind him stood a family of four—a man, his wife, and their two teenage daughters.

The four of them, all in pleated khaki shorts and brightly colored polo shirts, were very shaken and stood huddled together, keeping their distance from the one-eyed man.

"We're fine," the one-eyed man yelled back. "What the hell were you doing parking your car on the road?"

"Never mind that. I'm a doctor and I've got a man down here who is critically injured. We need to get him to a hospital. Is that motor home in any condition to drive safely?"

The one-eyed man glanced back at the land yacht. The front grill was smashed, but everything else seemed intact.

"Your car was just another bug on this baby's windshield," the one-eyed man said.

"Then I need you to come down and help me bring this man up," Mark said. "We have to get him out of here."

The Dinino family brought sheets and blankets from their rented motor home when they came down the cliff. With their help, Mark fashioned a litter and dragged Stryker up to the road. The family's driver, Cletus Mabry, waited for them in the motor home, unwilling to risk his remaining eye and testicle by negotiating the steep slope on foot at night. He was watching out for any other traffic on the road.