Beckett’s jaw drop.
His exhausted mind was having a hard time wrapping itself around the fact that Suzan knew this man… this ‘Brent Taylor’. And that she thought he could stay with them.
“What in the fuck is going on here, Suze?”
Suzan finally managed to untie the man and he rose to his feet. As Brent rubbed his wrists, which were red and raw, Beckett felt every muscle in his body tense as he prepared to pounce should this man try anything.
A friend of Suzan’s or not, Beckett wasn’t in the mood to get pummeled by a young punk dressed in rags.
“Why don’t you to sit down again,” Beckett suggested. He twisted his wrist slightly as he said this, causing light to reflect off the blade in his hand.
“Put the knife away, Beckett. I told you, he’s a friend. I thought maybe he could stay with us for a few days.”
Beckett didn’t listen, he simply looked from Suzan to Brent and back again.
“Suzan, this fucking guy broke into my house. He was fucking sneaking up on me.”
Suzan glanced at Brent, who, unbelievably, still hadn’t said anything.
“Are you a fucking mute? Why don’t you say something? Why the hell did you break into my house?”
Brent averted his eyes and lowered his chin to his chest.
Suzan, eyes blazing, stormed over to Beckett, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him into the kitchen. Beckett allowed himself to be led, but he didn’t take his eyes off Brent for a second.
“Beckett, you tied him up? You tied Brent up and put a knife to his throat?”
Beckett finally looked away from Brent and turned to Suzan.
“What the hell, Suzan? I come home after a long day at work only to find that this asshole broke into my house. What the hell did you want me to do? Let him sneak up on me?”
“I tried texting… and calling to let you know, but your damn phone was off. Brent… he’s not… he’s not well, Beckett.”
Beckett lifted his eyes to look at Brent again.
“No shit. What’s wrong with him?”
“He… look, I knew him in high school. Back then, he was normal. But something happened… they say he fell off his bike, but his dad was a grade A asshole and I wouldn’t be surprised if he had beat him up. After that,” Suzan leaned in close and continued quietly, “he was different—slow. It wasn’t long before people started to take advantage of him. Then, two years ago, I hear from some other friends that Brent was going to prison for dealing drugs. He didn’t… someone just tricked him, Beckett. Like I said, he was a good kid. He got out yesterday, and I thought I could help him out. But I couldn’t go to my mom, not with the newborn and what happened with Drake.”
Beckett could barely believe what he was hearing.
“Drake? You’re worried about Drake? With everything going on at the hospital, with the Internal Affairs assholes, you thought that bringing him here was a good idea? You think I need to have a fugitive in my house right now?”
Suzan shook her head.
“He’s not a fugitive, Beckett. He served his time and is out on parole. I just thought he could stay with us for a while. I wanted to ask you, but…”
Beckett looked at Brent again, whose eyes were once again looked on his worn running shoes.
“Nuh-uh, there’s no way,” Beckett said. No matter what Brent’s problems were and how close he was with Suzan, there was no change that he was letting the kid stay in his house. Not after he’d crawled through the window, not after what happened in the Virgin Gorda, not after what happened with Winston Trent, and definitely not after receiving fucking random organs on his desk with cryptic notes.
Suzan looked at him for a good ten seconds before answering.
“Seriously? Beckett, he needs help.”
“Damn right it does. But I’m not the man to help him. I’m sorry, Suzan but he can’t stay here.” A thought suddenly occurred to him. “But there is somewhere he can stay. There is this place, the… uhh… New York Revitalized Life thingy that helps people like him get back on their feet. It’s not too far from here, and I know I can get him a spot.”
Suzan’s jaw dropped.
“A fucking halfway house? Let me get this straight: you want him to go to a place full of ex-cons who are just going to manipulate him again? Get him arrested and thrown back in jail? Is that what you’re proposing?”
Beckett felt his anger rising.
“I’m trying to help him, Suzan, but like I said, he’s not staying here.”
Suzan pressed her lips together tightly and then walked over to Brent and hooked an arm through his.
“Well if he’s going, then I’m going with him. Because if he can’t stay, then neither will I.”
Beckett looked at Suzan’s face for any indication that she might be bluffing.
She wasn’t.
But Beckett was in no mood to negotiate.
“Fine. Go with him — just don’t be late for class tomorrow.”
The barb was intentional; Suzan hated when he treated her like his TA and not his girlfriend.
She led Brent to the door and opened it. Then she looked back, clearly giving Beckett an opportunity to change his mind, before slamming it closed behind them.
“Fuck!” Beckett swore. “What the fuck just happened?”
Chapter 21
Beckett hovered over the bodies, a gleaming scalpel in his hand. He was wearing his blue smock and a white mask that covered his nose and mouth. Both were speckled with blood. He moved to the first corpse, a man in his late-30s whose body was in relatively good shape.
His head wasn’t.
The mans’ skull was collapsed inward and his face squished as if made of Play-Doh. But Beckett wasn’t concerned with any of this.
He used the scalpel and performed a quick Y incision and then, with hands buried in thick, black rubber gloves, he pulled the skin of the man’s chest apart. Then he grabbed the Sawzall from the table beside him and began cutting away at the man’s ribcage. The room was suddenly filled with the sound of a whirring blade coupled with a high-pitched whine as Beckett cut through the ribs adjacent the sternum.
With a grunt, Beckett grabbed both sides of the ribcage and cracked them open like a turkey wishbone.
After switching out the Sawzall for his trusty scalpel, he set about cutting first through the thoracic cavity and then the pericardial cavity. Once the heart was exposed, he carefully severed the aorta, the pulmonary artery, and the superior vena cava. After gliding the blade behind the heart to sever all remaining connective tissue, Beckett reached inside the body and removed the man’s heart.
Inexplicably, it was still warm in his gloved hand.
Beckett placed the heart in a plastic biohazard bag and then nestled the package on the dry ice that nearly filled the organ transplant cooler.
Satisfied, he moved on to the next cadaver, that of Donnie DiMarco. Unlike Craig Sloan, this man’s face was intact, but he had the characteristic features of a man who’d drowned: sunken eyes, blue lips, pale flesh.
Beckett repeated the process with this man, but instead of just removing his heart, he removed the man’s liver, as well.
The next cadaver belonged to Ray Reynolds and lying beside him was the white hulk: Bob Bumacher.
He removed both of their hearts before moving on to the final two bodies: Boris Brackovich, whose neck was a tattered mess, and finally, Winston Trent, whose only sign of the torture he’d endured were small cuts on his wrists.
He removed their hearts and livers and placed them in the organ transplant cooler.
When he was done, Beckett sighed and wiped the sweat from his brow as he observed his handiwork.
Six bad men who had done bad things and would’ve continued to do bad things if Beckett hadn’t intervened.
Sometimes even a doctor had to take a life to save a life.
Or six.
Beckett was about to lay down the scalpel when he heard a sound from behind him and whipped around.
It was Suzan and she was staring at him, her eyes wide.
“What have you done? Beckett, what in the world of you done?”
Chapter 22
Beckett awoke drenched in sweat. There was a weight pushing down on his chest, and he could barely breathe.
He half-expected it to be Brent Taylor sitting on top of him and he looked to his left for Suzan for help.
But neither was in the room with him; he was alone.
With a gasp, Beckett managed to fully inflate his lungs. And with this, snippets of his dream came flooding back. They were incomplete, just flashes of blood, of a scalpel blade, of a bone saw, but they were enough.
Beckett raised his right arm and ran the fingers of his left hand across the tattoos that marked his ribs.
As he did, he muttered the names of those he’d taken.
“Craig Sloan… Donnie DiMarco… Ray Reynolds… Bob Bumacher… Boris Brackovich… Winston Trent…”
He did this several times until his breathing returned to normal.
Only then did he check the clock and was surprised to see that it was nearly six in the morning.
Despite the horrible nightmare, he had managed to sleep the whole night through, which was something of an anomaly with him. Beckett peeled the sweaty sheet off his body and then rose. With a grunt, he slowly made his way to the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror.
This was becoming a habit of his, a sort of tangible introspection that was relatively new. Evidently, taking the lives of six people—despicable, murderous creatures—changed you in more ways than one.
Beckett was taken aback by his own reflection. It wasn’t his matted hair, or his pale cheeks, or even the dark circles beneath his eyes that gave him pause; it was his eyes, themselves. Normally a vibrant blue, they appeared paler than usual.
Paler, and more empty.
“You’re just being melodramatic,” he muttered under his breath.
I know what you are… I know what you did…
For some reason, when the words from the yellow pieces of paper echoed in his head, they did so in Suzan’s voice.
Beckett showered quickly and then prepared himself a pot of coffee. After pushing the Brent Taylor debacle from his mind, he thought about what he’d uncovered yesterday, that the bags were from the McEwing Transplant Unit and that the organs belonged to a young male.
It wasn’t much to go on, but it was something. And even as a child, Beckett had been good at solving puzzles. Usually, however, the stakes weren’t this high.
***
“Morning, Dolores,” Beckett said as he passed her desk.
The woman glanced up as he approached, a look of surprise on her face.
“A little early for you, isn’t it, Dr. Campbell?”
She wasn’t wrong about that. Typically a late riser, lately, given his fitful sleep, Beckett had had the urge to get out of his house as soon as he could.
“What can I say, damn bedbugs can me up all night,” he said, but there was no humor in his voice.
Regardless, Dolores smiled.
“Hey, did you see Suzan here earlier? I’ve got a class in about a half hour, and I was hoping she’d be able to fill in for me so that I can catch up on my beauty sleep.”
Delores shook her head.
“Sorry, Dr. Campbell. I only got in twenty minutes ago and you’re the first person I’ve seen. Besides Dr. Hollenbeck, of course.”
Beckett nodded. Dr. Hollenbeck, the director of the pathology department, was 300 years old if he was a day, borderline senile, and spent every waking moment in the hospital.
Maybe he put the organs on my desk. Maybe Dr. Hollenbeck is moonlighting as a white coat in the organ transplant unit, Beckett thought. And maybe, just maybe, he got confused and removed a heart when he was supposed to take out the spleen and mistook my office as the lab.
It was improbable, but not impossible: the man had cataracts as thick as manhole covers.
“Thanks,” Beckett grumbled, shaking his head. “If you see Suzan, please tell her to come to my office.”
With that, Beckett hurried to his office at the end of the hallway. It only registered later that he didn’t have to unlock the door.
Briefcase in hand, he stepped into the room and then froze.
There, sitting on his desk, was a plain cardboard box.
Beckett’s heart started thumping in triple time and he felt as if his diaphragm had been attached to a live wire.
Please don’t be another one, please don’t be another one, please don’t be another one…
But when Beckett made his way around to the front of his desk, he knew that whatever deity presided over him had failed to answer his pleas.
His racing heart fell into the pit of his stomach.
“Fuck,” he whispered, staring at his name typed on the top of the box.
And then he yelled the word. Before storming out of the office and heading back to Delores, he threw his bag onto the chair so hard that it nearly toppled.
His blood was boiling now and even though Beckett knew that he was on the verge of losing control, he was helpless to prevent it.
Somebody was fucking with him, toying with him, playing a sadistic game with the lives of others.
Somebody who knew what he’d done, who knew what he was.
“Delores!” he screamed. “Delores! Who the fuck was in my office?”
Chapter 23
“I… I… I don’t know,” Delores stammered. She looked frightened, an expression that Beckett hadn’t seen on her jovial face before.
And yet, he couldn’t stem his rage.
“Someone was in my office,” he barked. “And I want to know who it was.”
Dolores just stared at him, her eyes blinking, her mouth opening and closing like a guppy, but she said nothing.
“Are there cameras in my office?”
When Delores just blinked again, Beckett leaned over her desk.
“I asked if there were cameras in my office?”
“No, I don’t… I don’t think so,” the secretary managed at last.
Beckett ground his teeth in frustration and turned his eyes skyward. He searched the drop ceiling for a camera and eventually saw a small dark globe in the entrance of the hallway.
“There,” Beckett snapped. “Right there. That’s a fucking camera.”
More blinking eyes and puckered lips.
“Can you call somebody? Can you call somebody and get me footage from that camera?”
“I don’t know if I—”
“Just fucking call someone!” Beckett screamed.
Delores recoiled and Beckett, still steaming, returned to his office and tore into the cardboard box. Part of him still hoped that it wasn’t another organ, but when he saw the white vinyl bag…
“Goddamnit,” he said as he opened the bag. Inside was another heart.
Three hearts, three dead people.
Beckett tried to swallow, but his throat was suddenly too dry.
Victims—three hearts, three victims.
He shook the thought away. There was no proof that these were victims… yet.
Beckett found the corresponding yellow note stuck between the cardboard box and the cooler and pulled it out.
Wherever you go, go with all your heart, it read.
Frustrated by the nonsensical saying, Beckett balled it up and tossed it into the trash.
He didn’t even bother looking for a hidden message this time.
Where are these goddamn organs coming from?
Beckett’s eyes rested on the pale pink heart in the clear biohazard bag as he contemplated what to do next.
Calling the cops and reporting the organs was out of the question—whether these hearts were taken from the scrap heap or from living people, whoever was sending them knew too much about Beckett.
He debated calling the lab guy again, but the last time they’d spoken, the man had sounded suspicious—and rightfully so.
His thoughts suddenly returned to the most common reason why the transplant unit received organs from young people in the first place.
Organ Donor: A Medical Thriller (Dr. Beckett Campbell, Medical Examiner Book 1) Page 8