Chapter 34
Drake wasn’t really sure how to react.
Should I stand? Shake hands? Hug?
It was strange, given how well he knew Beckett, how long he had known him, and how close he and Chase had become even in their short time together. And yet, time apart—six months, short on any global scale—could squeeze more than temporal distance between relationships.
Thankfully, the decision was taken out of his hands.
“Well? Stand the fuck up, you rude bastard and give me a hug,” Beckett exclaimed with a smile.
If Drake had any reservations, Beckett striding over to him instantly quashed them. Drake stood then embraced his good friend, clapping him twice on the back. Chase, while less enthusiastic than Beckett, also strode forward, and Drake hugged her as well.
No back claps this time, however.
“Nice digs, Drake,” Beckett said, looking around.
Drake chuckled. Triple D Investigations was hardly what he would call ‘nice digs’—they were a two-room outfit with peeling paint on the walls in a strip mall that paled in comparison to Dr. Mark Kruk’s lavish office—but something told him that maybe, just maybe, Triple D was due for an upgrade. Provided, of course, that the steady stream of paranoid octogenarian women didn’t suddenly dry up—literally or figuratively.
Still, Beckett wasn’t being mean-spirited; Beckett was just being Beckett.
“Pays the bills—not all of us can pretend to be doctors on TV, you know.”
Beckett snorted.
“Touché, my friend.”
Chase smiled at him.
“Nice to see you again, Drake. It’s been… well, it’s been a while.”
“It has,” Drake replied. “Take a seat guys, for once it’ll be me behind the desk. I’ll try for best Sergeant Rhodes impression, just to make you comfortable.”
Drake had meant his words as a joke, but seeing the way that Chase’s face dropped at the mention of Rhodes’s name, he knew better than to push it.
He also knew that his two friends weren’t here to put up cameras to catch cheating or stealing spouses. For one, Beckett wasn’t married and Chase… was she married? Drake wondered. He thought not, but couldn’t recall ever asking her directly. She didn’t wear a wedding band, that much he knew, but they seemed to be less popular these days, especially for a career woman such as herself.
“Sorry,” he said. “Please, sit.”
Chase took the seat that Mrs. Trout had vacated moments before, and Beckett pulled one from the side of the room and placed it next to hers.
“Something tells me that this isn’t a social call, much as we need to catch up,” he offered, trying again to keep the mood light.
“No, it’s not,” Chase said flatly. “I wish it was, Drake, and I’ll be the first to say that I feel terrible about—”
Drake held up a hand silencing her.
“No need, Chase. I didn’t call, you didn’t call, and Beckett… well, fuck Beckett.”
Beckett grunted.
“Oh, I called… and texted and left messages, but someone seems to have a hard time figuring out how to use their phone.” Beckett’s eyes drifted to Drake’s new cell phone that lay on the desk. “But I forgive you. After all, it must be hard operating that thing with your dinosaur claws and lizard brain.”
“I’m thirty-eight, Beckett. Less we forget who—”
Beckett made a clucking sound with his tongue.
“A woman never tells.”
Drake shook his head in amusement. He was about to add something, but he caught sight of Chase’s expression in the corner of his eye and stopped himself. Even though he and Beckett were having a good time ribbing each other, the joviality didn’t seem to extend to her.
Chase leaned forward as she spoke.
“But after what happened… you saved my life, Drake. Not only that but you fell on the sword for me, too. And that’s something I’ll never forget.”
Drake nodded briskly, accepting the compliment in stride.
“Alright Prince Fucking Charming,” Beckett interrupted, “as the French say, ‘let’s get to le point’.” He pulled a folder from his messenger bag and laid it on the table in front of them. When he moved to open it, Drake placed a palm on top.
He sighed heavily before speaking.
“Guys, I know that I’m going to come off sounding like a dick, but, please—please—don’t open the file.” Chase started to protest, but Drake continued, “Like I said, I’m a dick, I get it. But I’ve been through a lot, and I’m happy to say that I’ve moved on. Moved on from a lot of things, actually.”
An awkward silence fell over the quaint office. It suddenly felt too tight for Drake, too constricted, and he was beginning to think that a move might happen sooner rather than later.
Slowly, with one eyebrow raised, Beckett peeled Drake’s hand from the top of the manila folder.
“Okay, Eeyore, keep your panties on. We just want to show you a few images. Get your opinion on a couple of things. That’s all. We’re not entrusting you with North Korea’s nuke codes, alright?”
Beckett’s act was flawless, and Drake would have fallen for it, too, if it hadn’t been for Chase. The woman’s green eyes darted over at Beckett as he spoke, giving them both away.
And I thought you were the poker player, Chase? He thought absently.
Regardless, while Drake might be a dick, he wasn’t a prick. He leaned back in his chair and held his hands up, admitting surrender.
“First consultation’s free,” he said. But when Beckett flipped the folder open, Drake realized that this was no joking matter.
Chase leaned forward and spread five photographs on his desk.
“Two weeks, five dead bodies,” she said simply and then paused.
Drake, realizing that she wanted his immediate input, leaned forward and briefly glanced at each one of the photographs in sequence. When he was done, he said, “A bunch of people committed suicide. That’s what you came here for?”
“Ha!” Beckett exclaimed, turning to Chase. “See? Told ya. You owe me twenty.”
Chase frowned and shook her head.
“What? What am I missing?” Drake asked.
“Nothing,” Chase replied, shooting a look at Beckett. She took out another folder, and laid another series of photographs above the ones that Beckett had displayed.
Drake looked them over, his brow furrowing in confusion.
“I don’t get it—they’re the same.”
“Ah, my dear Watson, they are not the same. Close, but that only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades my friend. And this is neither. This is murder.”
Chapter 35
Number six was probably the most difficult to recreate. The man knew this; he knew it even before starting this entire task by slipping the ethanol into Trevor’s drink. But he was up for the challenge. After all, he had had more than a decade to plan this out. Fifteen years to study, to research, to plan.
Electrocution required very specific equipment, and very important safety measures. After all, he couldn’t die slitting someone else’s wrists, hanging someone, or shooting them in the face. But electrocution? One little mistake, one simple touch that lasted a second too long, and the current would enter his body as well. Only for a split-second, mind you, but that was all the time needed to fry his organic circuit board.
Yes, electrocution required a special sort of technique.
But he was up for the challenge.
The man wound down his window several inches as the tow truck driver approached.
“I don’t know what happened, mister,” he said with a shrug. “It just… it just stopped. It was in the shop a few weeks ago, and they said something about the cables going to the battery—corroded? Does that sound right? Anyway, I didn’t do anything about it, because I just thought that they were trying to stick me for more cash, you know?”
The left side of the tow truck driver’s upper lip curled.
“Should alw
ays listen to your mechanic,” he replied in a gruff voice.
The man in the car put a hand to his chest.
“I know, I know. A lesson lived is a lesson learned, as they say.”
The driver muttered something under his breath, something that sounded to the man in the car like, fucking queer, and then went to the front of the car.
“Pop the hood,” he shouted, scratching at an oil stain on his over-sized t-shirt.
“No problem,” the man hollered out the window as he pulled the hood release. “You know what? Let me help you.”
The tow truck driver held up a meaty palm before raising the hood.
“Nah, that’s alright, stay in the car.”
“No, no,” the man in the driver seat said, a smile on his face. “I insist.”
Chapter 36
Drake suddenly understood Chase’s expression when he had made the joke about Sergeant Rhodes.
“Lemme guess,” he said, “Rhodes didn’t want to touch this with a ten-foot pole.”
Beckett scoffed.
“Rhodes wouldn’t touch this with a goddamn Kraken tentacle.”
Drake shook his head and made a face.
What the hell does that even mean?
Rather than humoring Beckett, however, he turned his attention back to the images on his desk. He was still having a hard time seeing how they were different; to him, it looked like the same crime scenes, only the photographs were taken at slightly different angles. Which would make sense; he’d been at hundreds of crime scenes, and the photographers weren’t shy with their trigger fingers.
“Anyways, you sure that these aren’t, uh, natural—I mean, as much as suicide and accidents can be considered natural?”
“There’s no way,” Chase replied. “It’s not just the similarity, but it’s the order in which they occurred. First the, uh—”
“Asphyxia,” Beckett offered.
“—asphyxia, all the way to the gunshot wound. Next is electrocution. Problem is, Drake, we’ve got nothing. And with Rhodes being… what’s the word… resistant, we aren’t going to get anything. That’s why we need your help.”
Drake looked at Chase, at the photographs, then at Beckett. They were desperate, he saw, and despite his reservations, he could feel something tug at him the way a fat kid might pull a polo shirt that hugged him just a little too tightly around the hips.
Short, nagging little tweaks.
They needed him, and he felt the urge to help.
“This here looks like a drunk,” he said, pointing at the first photograph then to the drowning victim, “and this one’s definitely a junkie. What about the others, they all the same?”
Beckett shook his head.
“That’s what Chase and I discussed earlier. They’re all the same, except,” he planted a finger on the man hanging from the ceiling, his back to the photographer, “this one.”
“And?” Drake asked, “What’s so different about this guy?”
Something changed in Beckett’s face. It seemed to pinch somehow, fold in on itself.
“This guy’s a doctor. A student of mine.”
And with that, everything came flooding back: Dr. Edison Larringer’s visit, spouting off about suicides that weren’t really suicides, and Drake telling him to take a hike, to go to the police if he thought crimes had been committed.
“No,” he moaned, unable to control himself.
“Drake? You alright?” Chase asked, but her voice seemed far away. Very, very far away. Tunnel vision closed in just as Beckett jumped to his feet. He clapped a hand against Drake’s back as if he were choking.
“Drake? What the hell’s wrong with you? Drake!”
Drake shook his head and snapped back to reality.
“Please tell me this isn’t,” he racked his brain for the name, “Eddie.”
Now it was Beckett’s turn to be shocked.
“What? You knew him?”
Drake didn’t answer right away. Instead, he resolved himself to just shaking his head over and over again, until he got dizzy and his hangover returned with renewed fervor.
“Yeah, I know him. At least, I met him. He came in here about a week ago.”
Chase shot to her feet.
“What? What did he say? Why was he here?”
Drake licked his lips, which suddenly felt dry nearly to the point of cracking.
“Dr. Edison… Larringer? I think his name was Larringer—he came here with the exact same story that you guys are telling me now: a photograph of a suicide he thinks was actually a murder. Said he was a student of yours.”
Beckett gawked.
“What? For real? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Drake shook his head.
“I told the—shit, I told the young doctor to go to the police, that I wasn’t a cop anymore.”
“And what’d he say?” Chase asked.
“Said he couldn’t go to the police, that if he did he would get his medical license revoked—that’s what I think he said, anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because he stole the images from you, Beckett. He was trying to cheat on the test, and he took them from your desk.”
All of the air was sucked from Beckett’s lungs, leaving him with an expression that reminiscent of what Drake thought Mrs. Trout might look like sans dentures.
Drake himself was not exempt from the horrible realization that Eddie was dead, that he might have been the last one to see the young doctor alive. His heart started to race in his chest as he thought back to a day that which, while it couldn’t have been more than a week ago, felt like it had happened a decade or more prior.
And I know one thing for certain: that man… he didn’t die from positional asphyxia. He was murdered.
Drake had turned Eddie away. Like a pauper scorning an unworthy peasant, he had sent him away.
Now he was dead.
Murdered.
Memories of Clay came flooding back then, a deluge that threatened to drown him.
Should we announce our presence? Say that we are NYPD?
It’s your case, Clay, you decide. This is a waste of time, anyway.
“Tell me everything he said,” Beckett whispered. “I want to know everything.”
Chapter 37
An uncomfortable silence settled over the room after Drake had recounted his interactions with Dr. Edison Larringer. Part of him felt the need to defend himself, to say, ‘hell, it isn’t my problem, none of this was my fault. I’m no longer a detective with the NYPD’, but he knew that this was simply a defense mechanism that would only lead to self-pity or, worse, self-loathing.
And lord knows, he had enough of both to last a lifetime.
“I’ll help you,” he said at last. “Whatever you need, I’ll help you catch the killer.”
Beckett nodded solemnly. It was clear to Drake that like him, Beckett also harbored guilty feelings about the young doctor’s death.
“We have to stop him before he strikes again,” Chase said quietly.
“Do we have any suspects?”
She shook her head.
“None. But the images from the test? They were restricted. Only students could see them.”
“What do you mean, could see them?” Drake asked.
It was Beckett who answered.
“I asked the professor who posted them to take them down, which narrows our suspect pool to either a current or past student. That being said, I tried to gain access to student records, tried to get a friend in the IT department to give me a list, but he said no dice. Tighter than a nun’s—” his eyes darted to Chase, “—than a nun’s, uh, church bible. Anyway, I know who took the class this year and last, and can probably dig up names from a few semesters before that, but that’s about it.”
Chase nodded.
“I asked Officer Dunbar to do a little digging. He’s going to try and cross-reference the names that Beckett provided with criminal records, but he can only look superficially. He’s paranoid that Rhodes
is watching him, and with good reason after what happened with the Butterfly Killer.”
“Huh,” Drake grumbled. “So it’s all on me, is it?”
A thought occurred to him then.
“Beckett, reach back and open my office door, would you?”
Beckett nodded and opened it.
“Screech, can you come in here for a sec?”
In an instant, Screech appeared in the doorway.
“What is it, boss?” he asked, and Drake felt his face redden.
Boss; that’s what I used to call Chase as a joke.
“Just get in here. I need you to meet some people.”
Screech entered, and after introductions, Drake got his partner up to speed.
“So we’re looking for an ex-student, huh?” Screech asked.
Drake was surprised by the immediacy of his response. He looked to Chase first, then Beckett. After a nod from the former, he said, “Considering the restricted nature of the slides, yeah I think that’s the best place to start.”
“Not only that,” Beckett added, “but whoever’s doing this, whoever’s recreating these suicides, has considerable medical and scientific knowledge. He knows exactly how to kill these people to make them look like suicides, down to the angle of the ligature, to the amount of time to submerge the body in water. And so far CSU hasn’t found a hair, a fiber, any DNA at all consistent across crime scenes. I mean, I signed off on some of these as suicides before I knew about all of this, for Christ’s sake.”
Screech put his hands together and cracked his knuckles.
“Well, I can’t say that national espionage is my specialty, but I’m game.”
Drake didn’t share his partner’s enthusiasm, despite what had happened to Dr. Edison Larringer.
Chase apparently picked up on his apprehension, as she said, “Drake, I know what happened. I know what happened with Clay, with the Skeleton King, and what happened with Dr. Kruk. I can’t imagine the toll that has taken on you. But we need your help. I wouldn’t ask if…” she let her sentence trail off.
Drake bit his tongue. Chase knew what happened with the Butterfly Killer, of course, but she had no clue about the Skeleton King.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 41