“I'm sorry,” he whispered.
The girl collapsed to the ground in a heap. She was so thin that her bones looked like they might pierce through the skin.
Beckett rose to his feet and flicked his phone’s flashlight on. C.J. cowered away from the light, and he moved the beam away from her. A table suddenly materialized out of the darkness and he hurried toward it.
He was looking for a key to unshackle the poor girl, but what he found took his breath away.
There was a rusty device that looked like a medical grade cheese slicer lying atop a stack of bloody paper towels.
A dermatome, Beckett thought. He remembered using one during his dermatology rotation. They used it to remove the skin from fattier sections of the body and used them for skin grafts for burn victims. Why would the Reverend have a dermatome? What purpose—
Beckett gasped.
“Fuck me.”
He didn’t even need to see the bottle of skin glue in order for everything to click into place. And then fury threatened to overwhelm him.
“Fucking savage.”
It was all there, everything that the Reverend needed to cheat the genetic tests. And it was appalling.
The man was using Dr. Blankenship to identify patients with incurable conditions, like C.J. Vogel’s cystic fibrosis. They would come to him, or maybe his wife, and the Reverend would take them to the church, likely under the pretense of being saved. Then he would chain them up.
When he found a suitable surrogate, he would use the dermatome to remove several layers of skin from the inside of C.J.’s mouth.
Beckett thought back to when he first asked Brittany to open wide so that he could take the buccal swab. The Reverend had probably coached her not to say anything or to spread her mouth open too much in fear of the makeshift graft coming loose.
So, when Beckett swabbed Brittany’s mouth for skin cells, he was actually rubbing a graft of C.J.’s skin.
But Brittany was sick… she looked like she had cystic fibrosis. How did the Reverend fake that?
Beckett scoured the desk, shoving the dermatome off to one side. He noticed it wasn’t sitting on a layer of paper towels as he’d first thought, but newsprint.
Newsprint that he recognized from the bottom of the bird cage.
Fuck.
Brittany didn’t have cystic fibrosis; she was allergic to birds. The reaction he’d seen was caused by hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Rev. Cameron was probably making her breathe in the bird shit and feathers to induce a reaction, and once he took the allergens away, probably with a shot of corticosteroids, the girl’s recovery would be swift.
Brittany had no idea of what was going on, that she never had cystic fibrosis in the first place. The Reverend had tricked her, Dr. Blankenship, and Beckett himself.
“Kill me. Please, kill me.”
Beckett whipped around and stared at the poor girl. She was barely able to lift her head and her breathing was so shallow that it was nearly imperceptible.
There was a syringe on the table, and he picked it up, then Beckett loaded it with half of the midazolam he’d stolen from the hospital.
“Please,” C.J. groaned as he approached.
She reeked of piss and sweat, but Beckett didn’t mind. He dropped to his knees and cradled her head in his lap.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. And then he injected the full dose into a bulging artery in the side of her neck.
C.J.’s eyes went wide, but then they slowly started to close. Beckett waited for her breathing to become more regular, shallow as it was, then covered her nose and mouth with his hand.
She didn't struggle, she didn't even seize. The poor girl just slid silently into the night.
When he no longer detected a pulse, Beckett rose to his feet and brushed himself off. Then he collected the bottle of skin glue from the table and put it into his pocket along with the syringe.
It took him three tries to hoist himself out of the window and onto the lawn. Once there, he wiped the tears from his eyes and dialed a number on his phone.
The Reverend answered on the second ring. His words were slurred, as if he’d had a few drinks, perhaps celebrating his latest conquest.
His latest cure.
“Dr. Campbell, I didn't expect—”
“I'm sorry, Reverend. When I left the church, I didn't mean to embarrass you. It's just—well, I'm confused. I didn't think it was possible, I didn't think you could actually cure these people, but the evidence—”
“It's fine, I completely understand. After all, I am a doctor, too. I know what it's like to need overwhelming evidence to believe something. I'm just glad that you came around.”
The man's ego was so great that he couldn't see through Beckett's ruse.
“I'm just confused.”
“Would you like to come by for a drink? I've got that great peaty scotch you like. We can talk about it tonight if you want.”
Beckett started to smile.
“Yeah, I can do that. I'll be there in ten.”
“I look forward to it.”
Beckett hung up the phone and then dialed another number.
“Suzan? Yeah, I know you’re pissed, but I need a favor. It's important.”
Chapter 56
Sgt. Yasiv walked into Local 75 and immediately scanned the interior. Wayne Cravat would come to this bar to drink because he was scared and thought that the cops could protect him. But he wasn’t scared of Winston Trent or even Brent Hopper.
He was scared of Beckett… he was terrified of Dr. Beckett Campbell.
Yasiv went straight to the bartender with the handlebar mustache.
“You’re not gonna cause trouble like your buddy the other night, are you?”
Yasiv shook his head.
“Beer, please,” he managed. Taking a seat at the stool caused things to stop spinning and he got a better look at the bar’s patrons. As luck would have it, he found the exact man he was looking for. And, once his beer was delivered, he walked over and slid into the booth across from him.
“Sgt. Yasiv, I didn't expect to see you here.”
“Tully, I need to ask you something.”
The man scratched his beard.
“Sure, anything,” he said, clearly sensing that something was off.
Yasiv chugged half his beer, then pulled up the photograph of Beckett and Drake on his phone. This time he didn’t bother struggling to hold it still, he simply handed it over.
“You know either of these guys?”
Salzman looked at the image closely before handing it back.
“The guy on the right; I know him. He's a doctor with the Medical Examiner's Office. Beckett.”
Yasiv slumped against the seat cushion.
“He comes in here every once in a while, and he and I shoot the shit. Nice guy. Would never think that he’s a doctor, though,” Tully offered. “You all right, man? You don’t look so good.”
Beckett was stalking these men; he’d come here to glean information from Tully Salzman about his parolees, and then hone in on them.
He killed Winston Trent. He printed out a picture of Bentley Thomas and hung it up to taunt the man before he staged his suicide. That was why the paper used for the photo was from the Pathology Department.
And then he told Dr. Nordmeyer to quickly sign off on it being a suicide because no one cared about Winston Trent.
But Wayne… Wayne Cravat was different. Wayne wasn’t guilty.
Yasiv finished his beer, grumbled a thank you, and hurried out of the bar before Tully could stop him. Then he went back to his office and searched the files on his desk for something specific.
“Where is it?”
There were maybe two dozen files related to Wayne’s and Winston’s and now Brent’s cases, but that wasn’t what he was looking for.
“Got damn it!”
He slammed his office door closed, and that was when he saw it lying on the floor. Yasiv grabbed it and then opened it.
“Pl
ease,” he muttered.
In the folder that Dr. Karen Nordmeyer had given him, the one he'd forgotten about, was a photograph of a heavily muscled man that Yasiv didn’t recognize at first.
But when he saw the man’s name—Bob Bumacher—his memory snapped into focus. The man was responsible, allegedly, for bringing sex slaves from Colombia to New York.
He was the one who drove the yacht. Someone had gotten to him, though; someone had broken into his home and stabbed him multiple times.
But what does this have to do with Beckett?
Yasiv scanned the page until he saw the man’s name. He was the ME who had signed off on the man’s death. He flipped to the second page where someone had circled a line in red and put the initials KN beside the notation.
Apparently, there was DNA found under Bob Bumacher’s fingernails; DNA that matched none other than Dr. Beckett Campbell.
Yasiv had worked enough cases to know that sometimes the ME’s DNA found its way onto the victim’s body. But never once had he ever heard of the ME’s DNA ending up wedged beneath the fingernails of a murder victim.
Yasiv had seen enough. He threw the folder onto his desk and pulled out his cell phone. Only he didn’t dial a number for a long time. He just stared at it.
His mind was racing, trying to come up with a rational explanation for all of this. But he couldn’t. To him, there was only one way that all of these facts made sense. On their own, they meant nothing, but together…
Under normal circumstances, Yasiv didn’t think that he would be able to get a search warrant based on the sketchy evidence he had.
Only there was nothing normal about any of this. And Yasiv knew someone in the Special Victims Unit who had a knack for getting warrants in less than twenty-four hours.
Chapter 57
“Beckett, come on in,” a beaming Rev. Alister Cameron said.
Beckett, head hung low, slipped inside the man’s home.
“Would you like a drink?”
Beckett nodded and the Rev. retreated to the bar.
“Same as before? Ardbeg?”
“Yeah, please.”
As the man started to pour the drinks, Beckett slipped the syringe from his pocket into his palm.
“You know, I just have a couple of questions for you, about the girls you cured.”
The clinking of glasses stopped for a second and Beckett crept forward.
“Go ahead.”
“Did they ever come to your home?”
The Reverend turned and smiled.
“Sure. They liked my wife’s birds, and my wife liked them.”
Beckett took his drink from the big man.
“I figured. Just one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“How did you cure C.J. Vogel? That one is bugging me.”
The Reverend’s smile faltered.
“Excuse me?”
“It's just—” the scotch glass slipped from Beckett’s hand and fell to the floor. “—shit! I'm sorry.”
Beckett dropped to one knee and the Reverend followed.
“That's okay, Holly will just—”
Beckett thrust upward with the syringe, burying it deep in the man's soft neck. Rev. Cameron was so surprised that he fell on his back. Beckett mounted him, driving the syringe deeper and then pushing the plunger all the way down. Rev. Cameron croaked and tried to buck, but Beckett lowered his weight onto the man’s chest.
“What are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?” The Rev. yelled, trying desperately to shake Beckett off.
But Beckett lowered his hips and held on.
After close to a minute, the Reverend’s movements started to slow.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because,” Beckett hissed. “God doesn't choose who lives and dies. I do.”
Chapter 58
Rev. Alister Cameron opened his eyes. By this point, the midazolam had mostly worn off and he immediately started to struggle.
But Beckett had done his due diligence. The Reverend was large and strong, but Wayne Cravat was also a big man.
He'd made sure that the duct tape that secured the man's wrists and ankles to the swivel chair was solid.
“You had me, you know that?” Beckett said as he entered the room.
The Reverend’s wide eyes fell on him and he tried to scream, but his words were muffled by the tape laced across his mouth.
“You had me, and I must admit the whole skin grafting thing? That was pretty fucking good. I mean, it wouldn’t have held up forever. Eventually, I would have asked for blood tests, and if that still didn't prove you were a fucking liar, I would've done a full genetic test. But at face value? That was smart.”
Beckett was holding a scalpel in one hand and the bottle of skin glue in the other. He weighed each of them. The Reverend started huffing and breathing heavily when he raised the scalpel. Beckett lowered it and held up the skin glue, but this didn’t elicit the same visceral reaction.
“That's too bad; trust me that the scalpel would have been the easier way out. You should have picked the scalpel.”
Beckett slid the blade back into his case and then put it in his pocket. Then he walked right up next to Alister and knelt before him.
“I'm getting better at this,” he said with a hint of pride. “I knew there was something wrong with you the second I saw your photo in the newspaper. I just didn't know you’d gone this far. I didn’t know that you deprived those poor kids of any treatment they might need, even if it was palliative. I didn’t know you were so sick.”
Beckett started to remove the top from the skin glue container, and the man tried again to speak.
“Yeah, I don't think so. You see, this isn't my first rodeo, either. I take off that tape, and you'll just beg for your life, say you didn't mean it, say you won't do it again. I've heard it all before and none of it is worth my time.”
Beckett walked around behind the Reverend and then grabbed him by the hair.
“Now be a good boy and hold still,” he said as he reached down with the skin glue.
But Alister Cameron wasn't a good boy and he thrashed mightily. But he had a good set of blond hair and when Beckett yanked, the man’s head went straight.
Beckett jammed the nozzle of the skin glue up the Reverend’s right nostril. He squeezed hard, injecting about half a bottle’s worth before moving onto his other nostril.
The man tried desperately to snort the glue out, but with his mouth covered, he just leaked snot onto his cheek.
It would take a while for the glue to harden, resulting in a horrible death via suffocation.
And Beckett planned to watch the entire thing.
He walked around to the front of the chair again and squatted. The Reverend’s face was starting to turn red.
“You took the—” Beckett stopped when a car pulled into the driveway. “Quiet now.”
A car door opened and then closed again, and footsteps made their way toward the house. He heard a key in the lock, and then the door opened.
“Thank you so much for taking me out, I really enjoyed the film,” Holly said.
“No problem,” Suzan called back. “Now I gotta find out where my deadbeat boyfriend is. Have a good night!”
“You too.”
The door closed, and Holly tossed her purse onto a bench.
“Alister? You here?”
Suzan started the car and pulled out of the driveway.
“Alister?”
Holly walked to the family room and flicked on the lights.
Her eyes went wide, and she saw Alister strapped to the chair, his face now purple, his eyes bulging and red from the lack of oxygen.
“Alister!” she shouted and ran to them. But the woman only made it three steps before Beckett reached out and snaked an arm around her throat.
“You’ve been a bad girl, haven't you, Holly,” he whispered in her ear, before injecting the rest of the midazolam. “You and your birds.”
Beckett was in f
or a long, tiring night. But it would all worth it in the end, he knew.
Chapter 59
“Jesus, Beckett, are you okay? You look terrible?” Suzan said as soon as Beckett opened the door to their Airbnb. “When you called and said you were in the hospital, and that I should take the Reverend’s wife out to the movies, I thought…”
“Naw, no big deal. I just didn’t want you to be alone or to see me like that. After all, me man, me strong, me take care of woman.”
He thumped his chest.
“But what happened? Are you okay?”
“Fine, just had another one of those fucking headaches. But the good news is,” Beckett held up the sheet of paper with Dr. Blankenship’s header on it, “this.”
“What the hell is this?” Suzan asked, taking the paper from his hand.
“It's from Dr. Blankenship. I went back to him last night to get some stronger stuff for my headaches, and he gave me this.” Beckett watched as Suzan scanned the sheet of paper, her lips moving ever so slightly as she read. “Clean bill of health. Said I was just dehydrated and that I had low potassium. Eat a banana, drink water and I'll be all good.”
Suzan looked up at him with tears in her eyes, then gave him a big hug.
Beckett chuckled and hugged her back.
“I thought you skipped town after your embarrassing display at the church.”
“I'll admit it, I wanted to die. That was the worst.”
Suzan pulled away and then noticed his hands.
“Why are your fingernails so dirty?”
“Ah, you know, these rural hospitals, they make you take out your own bedpans.”
Suzan mock-gagged and Beckett suddenly grew serious.
“What you say we go home, Suzan? I'm tired, and I don’t think I like this place very much.”
Suzan smirked.
“I don't like it much here, either, to be honest. And if we stay any longer, you’re going to be admitted to the hospital for coronary artery disease from all the chicken and waffles you’ve been eating. I think we should get on a flight outta town this afternoon.”
Beckett nodded.
“Sounds good to me.”
Injecting Faith Page 17