“Beckett? You getting one of your headaches again?”
He snapped his fingers and turned toward the drawer to the left of the stove. He yanked it open and pulled out the newspaper.
“Here it is,” Beckett exclaimed. He tossed it to Suzan who somehow managed to catch it against her chest.
“Gee, thanks. You make a girl feel so special,” she remarked as she looked at the front page.
“I was thinking about that vacation I owe you,” Beckett began. “Seeing what we both went through with the organs and the McEwing disaster and all that jazz.”
Suzan's face lifted but then sank again as she read the headline article. She turned the paper around, showing Beckett the photo of the pastor with his arms out to the sides. The one whose head was circled in red had Xs over his eyes, and a comic tongue lolling out, all courtesy of Beckett’s Sharpie.
“Montréal,” she said simply. “You promised me Montréal.”
“I know, I know,” Beckett said as he turned his back to her and started to wash the dishes. “It's just that it’s cold as balls there, now. I mean, it's probably like minus a hundred Celsius, and nobody knows how cold that is in Fahrenheit. And the French… don’t get me started on the French. I say we go somewhere warm, instead.”
“Yeah, I'm down for somewhere warm… like that place you were telling about, the beautiful island. Gordo or something like that. How about we head there?”
Beckett cringed. After what had happened in the Virgin Gorda, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to show his face in the Caribbean again.
“No, I’m partial to the Carolinas—South, to be exact. Ever since I was a boy, I always wanted to go to South Carolina. There's just something about their beautiful accents, their—”
“Bullshit,” Suzan muttered. “Pure bullshit.”
“No, it's true,” Beckett joked as he placed the final plate in the dry rack. “My entire life, I only just wanted to see—”
“Redneck hillbillies?” Suzan finished for him, a scowl on her full lips.
“Don't be racist, Suzan. It's not becoming of you.” Suzan sighed, but Beckett ignored her. “Just look at that headline: Father Alister Cameron Cures Death. I just need to go there. For science. For medicine. I mean, he cures death, Suzan. What kind of doctor am I—will you be—if you don’t investigate the good man’s claim. What kind of humans would we be?”
Suzan rolled her eyes, but he could tell that she was cracking.
“You're not going to embarrass me, are you?” she asked, tracing a line over the Xs on the priest’s face with her finger.
Beckett grinned.
“Of course not, lover. I wouldn't dare embarrass you.”
Suzan's face twisted; she absolutely hated when he called her lover.
“Fine. But I want five—no six-star accommodations. Goddammit, I want to stay at the mayor's house.”
“Oh, please, easy on the blasphemy,” Beckett joked. “But you can have whatever you like, my love. But first… are you ready for tonight?”
Chapter 7
“These guys… these sexual predators?” Dunbar continued, his anger rising. “They don’t just stop at six or seven or ten. Once they start, they keep on getting more and more sadistic.”
Sgt. Yasiv took a drag of the cigarette and looked over at his friend. Dunbar had joined him outside after PO Tully Salzman had left, even though he didn't smoke.
“You seem to know a lot about these perverts.”
“Yeah, well, one day I want to have kids. And the more you know… you know how it is. Knowledge is power.”
Yasiv took another drag. Clearly, his friend had put a lot of thought into this.
“Do you want to be a sergeant, one day?” Yasiv asked, eager to change the subject.
Dunbar scoffed.
“You kidding me? To go through the shit that you’ve been through? No thanks. Not for me.”
Yasiv couldn't help but smirk. The truth was, no one had asked him if he wanted to be a sergeant. He was just thrust into the position without so much as a meeting with HR.
Here you go, here are the keys to 62nd precinct. You’ll report to the Deputy Inspector… oh, wait, that post is currently vacant. Then you’ll report to the mayor… naw, that won’t work, either. Me then, the DA. Talk to me. Now be a good lad and go about your business.
“What, then?”
Dunbar didn’t hesitate.
“SVU.”
Yasiv was surprised; the first time they’d come across a body together, Dunbar had to excuse himself to vomit. He didn’t hold it against the man, but the Special Victims Unit? Sex crimes, often against children? That was some next-level shit.
And yet the man's passion was obvious.
“SVU, that’s where I want to be.”
Yasiv nodded.
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Dunbar, I'll do what I can to get you where you want to go. But I’ll be honest, I could use you here. Even after all the indictments, not all rats sank with the ship. And I can trust you, which is more than I can say about most others in our precinct, or any other.”
He paused, waiting for Dunbar to fill in the silence.
The man didn't.
“SVU… okay, I get it. As you know, the DA is pressuring me to find Wayne Cravat, which fits in nicely with your plan. You want to join me on this one on a full-time basis?”
Dunbar nodded a little too enthusiastically.
“I've got some other cases on the go, but—”
“Pass them onto someone else. We need to focus on finding Wayne, and then we'll go from there. What do you say?” Yasiv held his hand out. “Partners?”
Dunbar grinned and shook it.
“Partners. So, when do we get started?”
Sgt. Yasiv turned his eyes skyward. The sun had long since set and the stars were peeking through the clouds. Or maybe those were just the lights of New York City; they were indistinguishable, after all.
“Right now, that's when we start. Come on, get your gear. The faster we can find this guy, the less likely he is to take another victim.”
Chapter 8
After Beckett finished his scotch, and Suzan was nearly done with her glass of red wine, he turned to her and yawned.
“I'm getting tired,” he said. They were watching some nonsense on TV, a reality show that, in essence, pitted one dimwit against another for cash. It reminded him of something he’d seen on the Internet long ago. Some guy with too much money and not enough morality went around paying homeless people cash to fight each other. It was horribly tasteless, but it wasn’t a stretch from what passed as quality programming these days.
“You're never tired, and you never sleep,” Suzan shot back.
“Don't you have an exam tomorrow?”
Suzan nodded.
“Yeah, but I'm all tapped out. Besides, it’s just an anatomy class and I can think of better ways of studying than reading a book. There’s no substitute for hands-on learning.”
Beckett smiled.
“Oh really? Then what's this?” He reached out and gently traced a line from behind her ear to her chin.
Suzan turned into him as he did this.
“Mandible,” she said. Her voice was husky now and Beckett's grin grew into a full-fledged smile. He knew just how to get to her.
Beckett continued down her chin to the hollow of her throat, resting in the crevice between her collar bones.
“And this?”
“Jugular notch.”
Lower now, to the top of her breast. She was wearing a thin T-shirt, and he could see her nipples harden beneath the fabric. He continued even lower and gently grazed her nipple with the pad of his thumb.
“Areola,” Suzan whispered. Temptation suddenly overwhelmed her, and she knocked his hand away. Then she slung her leg over and straddled him. Before Beckett was even sure what was happening, Suzan was kissing him, hungrily probing his mouth with her tongue.
Her breath was coming in shallow gasps and Beckett felt the front
of his jeans become tight.
He gently moved her away from him and pulled her T-shirt over her head, revealing her bare breasts. Her skin was covered with goose pimples and she shivered. Beckett cupped one of her breasts then leaned forward, gently rubbing his cheek against her nipple.
Then he let go, and she leaned back, looking down at him.
“Don't stop,” she said quietly. “Why are you stopping?”
“Tell me that you’re going to come with me to South Carolina,” he teased. “Promise me.”
Suzan rolled her eyes and then reached down between his legs. She grabbed his penis through his jeans and squeezed. Hard.
Beckett winced.
“Promise me that you won't embarrass me,” she countered.
“I promise,” Beckett said. And with that, he grabbed her breast again and gently flicked her nipple. Suddenly, her hand was no longer squeezing his penis, instead, she’d unzipped his fly and was trying to pull it through the opening.
Suzan used her free hand to encourage him to grab her other breast at the same time.
Beckett was forced to uncross his fingers before he obliged.
Chapter 9
“According to Tully Salzman's notes, this is where Wayne Cravat worked. Lucius Meats.” Dunbar pulled back from the sheet of paper and made a face.
“It sounds like a strip club,” Yasiv remarked.
“No kidding,” Dunbar said. “And he worked mostly in the sausage department, loading different meats and whatever else they put in the goddamn things in the grinder. Let me ask you something, Yasiv? Why do these assholes always have to have creepy jobs? Why can't they just do normal things? Like work in a bookstore or be a web designer?”
Yasiv thought about this for a minute as he stared out the window. Lucius Meats was a meat packing plant roughly fifty miles from 62nd precinct. It was a twenty-four-hour plant that provided meat for the grocery stores in the area as well as a handful of restaurants. Even now, as the hour approached ten at night, the lights were on, and there was a fair bit of activity on the docks. People smoking, others, like them, sitting in their cars.
“I think it's the other way around,” Yasiv said. “I think it's the people that make the job creepy. Think about it, if Wayne Cravat was a postman, you’d think that that was a creepy profession.”
“You might be right.”
“You know why most child molesters are priests or teachers or security guards… that sort of thing?”
“Yeah, so that they can be close to their prey. It's not the job that made them that way, but the way they are that made them choose the job.”
“Which makes me wonder why Wayne Cravat works at a meat factory,” Yasiv said, as he opened the door and stepped into the night. “Come on, Dunbar, let's get in and out of here as fast as we can. It stinks.”
***
“Yeah, I know Wayne. Hard to miss that guy. Not so flush in the brains department, if you know what I mean,” the man said as he jabbed a pitchfork into a plastic-lined cardboard box full of pig parts. He skewered some meat, then dropped into a silver hopper.
The smell inside the factory was predictably worse, a gamy scent mixed with artificial lemon cleanser. It was making Yasiv’s head spin.
“You mind stopping that for a second?”
The man sighed then placed the butt end of the pitchfork on the ground and turned to look at him. He'd seen some rough times, this man had. Even with the white lab coat splattered with blood, the dual hairnets, one on his head and one on his chin, it was clear that he’d led a qualified existence. It was also clear that he had developed a distrust for police officers.
“Thanks,” Yasiv grumbled. “So why did you hire the man?”
He shrugged.
“Management told me to, that's why.”
Yasiv had just about given up. He was getting nowhere fast with this man and considered leaving the plant entirely before Dunbar chimed in.
“Yeah, I could see how that would piss you off. You have kids—” Dunbar's eyes darted to the name tag on the man's blood-splattered coat— “Frank?”
“Yeah, two kids. Why?”
There was something in what little was visible of his face—just his eyes and nose—combined with the way he said those words that let Yasiv know that while he did have children, Frank likely hadn't seen them in a while. Divorced, most likely. Wife left with another man and took the kids.
“You know what Wayne did, right?”
“I heard rumors, everyone around here was talkin’ about it. Don't like the news much, so I dunno for sure. Alls I know is that he kept to hisself before and after he was arrested.”
Yasiv's ears perked.
“You mean Wayne worked here before he was arrested?”
Frank nodded.
“Yeah, started a month or two before. When he was arrested, the union stepped in and put him on leave or some bullshit, and he got his job back once he beat the case.”
“And you’re sure he hasn’t been at work for the last three days?” Yasiv asked.
Frank shook his head.
“No, that’s not what I said; I said that I haven't seen him in three days. You can check the timestamps, but I didn’t work on Monday. I was in yesterday and today, and he ain’t here. Was scheduled, though.”
Yasiv looked over at Dunbar, who scribbled this information on a small pad.
“Any idea what this Wayne guy liked to do after work?”
“The fuck should I know? He ain’t my friend.”
Yasiv nodded. Even if they were pals, admitting to being cozy with an accused child molester and murderer wasn’t something that you’d readily admit to.
“Look, I gotta get back to work. You want to talk to somebody, talk to the supervisor.”
“I thought you were the supervisor.”
Frank stared at him as if he had three heads.
“I'm the night shift supervisor. I’m talking about the supervisor, supervisor. Now can I please get back to work? I need this job.”
In the way he’d said that last part was also revealing; the man was on parole, and this job was likely the only thing keeping him from being behind bars.
“Sure. Thanks for your help,” Yasiv said, and then indicated for Dunbar to head back outside. Dunbar wasn’t done yet, however; he pulled a business card from his pocket.
“Hey, man, all we want to do is catch this asshole. We hate him just as much as you do. If you hear anything around the shop, hear anything at all about where he might be, let us know, okay?”
The man begrudgingly took the card and jammed it into his lab coat pocket. Yasiv knew the likelihood of hearing from Frank ever again was next to nil. The man might hate child molesters as Dunbar might loathe them, but he hated cops more.
All ex-cons did.
Frank struck Yasiv as the type of person who liked to take care of problems himself, take matters into his own hands, and dole out justice as he saw fit.
Chapter 10
Beckett stared up at the ceiling, his fingers interlaced and laid across his stomach. Suzan had fallen asleep more than an hour ago and was now snoring lightly at his side.
It was closing in on midnight—the witching hour—and for the life of him, Beckett couldn't find a way out of his current predicament. He had a fucking corpse in the basement, the corpse of a man he’d killed, the corpse of a child molester and murderer, who deserved everything he’d gotten.
And while Beckett wasn't unsettled about the body itself—he’d come across plenty of those during the course of both his professional and extracurricular activities—the prospect of it just sitting there, getting warm, the bacteria in the man's gut flourishing now that they were unencumbered by churning gastric juices, and the prospect of Suzan sleepwalking and discovering it, was enough to put him on edge.
The good news was that Suzan had agreed to go with him to South Carolina. He’d lied to her about why they were going there, of course; he harbored no childhood desire to see the area. Instead, Beckett h
ad seen something in Rev. Alister Cameron’s eyes, in both the newspaper photo and other images he’d managed to scour online, that drew him to the man like a magnet.
It was the same look he’d seen in Winston Trent’s and Flo-Ann McEwing’s eyes, and Donnie DiMarco’s before that.
The Rev. may claim to have cured death, but Beckett was almost certain that he’d also caused it at one point in time, as well.
But a face-to-face meeting was required, just to be sure. And proof. He needed that, too. After all, what kind of harbinger of justice would he be if he just went around killing people because they had an off look in their eyes, telling as this might be?
No, Beckett had his code, and he would stick to it—he had to. He would reserve judgment for those who he was certain had committed murder, those who could not contain their urges and were destined to do it again.
And again. And again. Unless someone stopped them.
Shadows drifted across the ceiling as cars drove by outside. Their headlights squeezed through the vertical slats of the blinds covering the window, causing straight lines to form on the drywall above. These reminded him of his tattoo gun in the bedside table not three feet away.
He needed to add another tattoo to his collection, one to remind him of what he’d done to Wayne Cravat. He had eight now, one for each of his kills. One for each person who had either slipped through the hands of justice or who taunted her from just out of the good woman’s grasp.
The tingling in his fingers had stopped, for the time being, at least. He found himself wondering, when he was alone and deep into a bottle of scotch, whether the tingling had always been there, or if he only noticed it after his chance encounter with Craig Sloan.
Beckett had relived that moment more than fifty times since it happened nearly two years ago. In fact, he chased it with every kill.
He’d been entrusted with the task of keeping the serial killer locked in his trunk, while Detective Damien Drake ran into the burning house to rescue Suzan. But Craig had shot his way out of the trunk and was heading down the side of the house. The man had almost slipped into the night when Beckett approached. He knew that Craig was out of bullets, but he also knew that if he just let the man walk, they might never find him again.
Injecting Faith Page 3