Diagnosis Murder 3 - The Shooting Script by Lee Goldberg Read Free Book Online

Poppins or anything, there were people who didn't like her," Elsie said. "But nobody hated her or wanted to hurt her, at least not that I know about. Even if somebody did, Amy could have handled it. If I were you, I'd start checking hospitals."
    "Why?" Steve asked.
    "Because Amy would have gone down fighting," Mark said emerging from the hallway, clumsily twirling Amy's nunchaku in his hand. "She'd been studying Tae Kwon Do for some time. I saw her uniform and her brown belt."
    He abruptly lost his grip on the nunchaku , sending it spinning into a bookshelf, where it narrowly missed shattering one of the lava lamps.
    "Sorry about that." Mark picked up the weapon and set it down in front of Elsie. "How long had Amy been training?"
    "Off and on for years, when she could afford it," Elsie said. "When Amy was a kid, her mother got assaulted on the street by some mugger. So it was important to Amy to be able to take care of herself."
    "Was she any good at it?" Steve asked.
    Elsie leaned forward and snubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray as if she were squishing a bug with it. "Good enough to kick the gun out of a guy's hand and make him eat it."
    A harsh, unnaturally white light suddenly seeped in through the closed drapes of the window.
    "What the hell is that?" Elsie asked.
    Steve went to the window, parted the drapes, and peered at the street.
    The lights were coming from atop a CNN satellite broadcast truck parked across the street to illuminate the building and create a backdrop for the reporter on the sidewalk, who was facing a cameraman and delivering a live report.
    In a moment, more reporters would be showing up, and they'd all want to talk to the Elsie Feikema about her murdered roommate. Within the hour, Elsie's face would be on TVs from LA to Minsk. She was about to become an instant celebrity. All it took was a double murder.
    Steve closed the drapes and turned to Elsie. "I think your luck is about to change."
    * * *
    There were six television sets on the wall in Police Chief John Masters' office at Parker Center, and on every one of them he saw the same image. He saw Lt. Steve Sloan brushing past reporters camped outside murder victim Amy Butler's Hollywood apartment building, mumbling a brusque "I have no comment at this time," before hurrying to his car.
    But that wasn't what caught the chief's attention.
    One of his TVs was connected to a TiVo, a digital video recorder which allowed him to freeze live footage as if it was already on tape. He aimed his TiVo remote at one of the screens and froze the broadcast, backed up a few frames, and found what he was looking for.
    While the cameras were focused on Steve, nobody paid any attention to the man with the grocery bag walking down the sidewalk and around the corner behind him. But Masters recognized the flash of white hair and the merry stride that belonged to only one man.
    And now, in the frozen image, he could see the man glancing over his shoulder, a mischievous smile under his white mustache.
    Dr. Mark Sloan.
    It was obvious to Masters that Steve had timed his dive into the pack of reporters to coincide with Mark discreetly slipping out the back door of the building. Masters assumed Mark waited around the corner, out of sight of the reporters, for Steve to pick him up.
    As much as the chief disliked the idea of Mark being involved in the case, he was thankful that Steve was smart enough to keep his father away from the media. If Mark Sloan had been on camera, it would have made it look like the LAPD was incapable of handling a high-profile murder case without the help of a civilian.
    It was only a brief reprieve. Masters knew it was inevitable that the press would find out that Mark Sloan discovered the murders and that he was up to his neatly trimmed mustache in the investigation.
    Ever since Masters had become chief of police, he'd tried to sever the department's ties to the meddling doctor. It didn't matter to Masters that Mark had an impressive record when