Read Online Diagnosis Murder 6 - The Dead Letter by Lee Goldberg - Free Book Online

millions of dollars in city contracts from Delmar to build low-income housing. He also found out that Delmar's girlfriend drove around in a Mercedes leased to Lorusso Construction. Stryker was black mailing both Delmar and Lorusso."
    "So what makes them more likely than the others to have killed Stryker?"
    "Lorusso's name has come up in several organized-crime investigations," Steve said, "but we've never been able to make anything stick. He wouldn't have a problem finding someone to remove Stryker from the population."
    "Makes sense." Mark scrolled down to the next case.
    Weldon Fike was a convicted rapist who was paroled and given a new identity in exchange for testimony against a prison gang responsible for arranging the murders of trial witnesses. One of Fike's rape victims hired Stryker to track him down so she could expose him to the public.
    "Where is Fike now?" Mark asked.
    "Here in LA," Steve said. "About to marry a woman worth about a hundred million."
    "That's a hundred million motives for murder right there," Mark said.
    Steve clicked to the next case. "This is the file that's going to be the trickiest to handle."
    "Why's that?"
    "Because it hits so close to home," Steve said and went on to summarize the case for Mark.
    Stryker was hired by a church to find tens of thousands of dollars in stolen computers, paintings, and rare artifacts. The police, in the opinion of the pastor and his congregation, just weren't doing enough. Stryker's search included scanning eBay, where he found several of the stolen items listed under several different auction accounts.
    "He bought some things and managed to trace the items back to a warehouse in Chatsworth, owned by Harley Brule," Steve said. "Who happens to be the detective in charge of LAPD's West Valley Major Crime Unit"
    "That explains why the police weren't aggressively pursuing the case," Mark said.
    "It gets worse. Stryker tapped into the warehouse's own surveillance system and discovered the place is stocked wall to wall with stolen goods, hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of jewelry, electronics, artwork, even a couple of cars," Steve said. "He also kept track of people coming and going from the warehouse, which included other MCU cops, as well as several patrol officers from ValTec, a private security company."
    "Who was Stryker blackmailing." Mark asked.
    "Everybody," Steve said. "It's his most recent score. They were supposed to make their first payment this week."
    "Did they."
    Steve shook his head. "If they did, it was with a bullet."
     
     

CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    While Mark made breakfast, Steve showered and got into fresh clothes. Over pancakes and bacon, orange juice and coffee, they sketched out a game plan for the investigation.
    Their first stop would be to see Stryker's attorney. Then, depending on whatever warrants the DA could get them, they would move to arrest and interrogate the three top suspects in Stryker's murder and the firebombing of his office. In the meantime, they'd go over Stryker's phone and credit-card records and see if they could trace his movements over the last few days.
    Steve called his captain and the DA to brief them on the Stryker files while Mark cleared away the dishes, took a shower, and got dressed.
    When Mark returned to the kitchen, Steve was just hanging up the phone. He told his father there was going to be a slight change in their itinerary. Amanda had called to say that she'd finished her autopsy report on the body found in the dumpster and that Tim Lau, the arson investigator, was on his way down to meet her with his preliminary findings.
    Mark and Steve packed the stacks of files into old cardboard boxes and priority-mail cartons scrounged from the garage, put the boxes in the trunk of Steve's department-issue Crown Victoria, and slogged through the rush-hour traffic to Community General Hospital.
    They walked into the morgue to find Amanda and Tim at her desk, sipping coffee and laughing together over something.