Organ Donor: A Medical Thriller (Dr. Beckett Campbell, Medical Examiner Book 1)

by Patrick Logan

  “Are you sure you didn’t go there to see Grant?”

  Suzan’s face sucked inward.

  “Who the fuck is Grant?”

  “Oh, okay, so now you’re going to pretend like you don’t know him, like you weren’t standing beside me during the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the transplant unit that has his name on it.”

  “Grant McEwing? Now you’ve really lost your mind.”

  “Yeah, I saw him there, too. Arrived just a few minutes before you, in fact.”

  Suzan opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it again. After a short pause, she finally spoke, only this time, her voice was unnaturally calm.

  “You were spying on me,” she accused.

  “I was just—”

  Suzan suddenly stormed past him.

  “You know what? I’m fucking done with this. Get someone else to mark your tests. I quit.”

  Beckett felt a mixture of emotions then, sadness, but also relief.

  “That’s what you wanted, right? A way out?” Suzan spat as she reached for the door handle. As she pulled it wide, she turned back one last time. “By the way, you’ve got another delivery. You can deal with that one by yourself, just like everything else. Because that’s the way you work, right? Keep everything to yourself. Beckett and his little fucking secrets.”

  Chapter 41

  Beckett stood frozen in the center of his office long after Suzan was gone.

  Eventually, his phone buzzed on his desk and this drew him out of his near catatonic state. He walked over to it, but instead of answering, he bent and looked beneath the desk.

  He thought he was prepared for what was beneath, but he wasn’t.

  It was another box with the exact same dimensions as the three previous packages.

  For some reason, Beckett had thought because he’d figured out who was sending them, that the packages would stop coming.

  Clearly, this was not the case.

  Three days, three different packages.

  Breathing in shallow bursts, Beckett picked up the package and put it on his desk. Only, this time he didn’t open it; he just stared at it.

  Suzan and Grant were becoming more brazen; shit, she’d even pointed it out to him.

  Beckett shook his head repeatedly, trying to wrap his mind around what was happening.

  It was a mistake to go to sleep last night, he realized. It was a mistake go to sleep without taking care of the problem. And because of I did, another person is dead.

  Making up his mind, Beckett picked up the box and started towards the door. As he made his way down the hallway, he tried his best to regulate his breathing.

  “Delores, you wouldn’t happen to know who delivered this parcel today, would you? I’m getting sick and tired of people sending me flowers, seeing as I’m allergic.”

  He sounded like a robot, but it was the best he could do given the circumstances.

  “I’m sorry Dr. Campbell, but I was delayed this morning. If you really want to know who delivered it, I can get you the security footage again,” she hesitated before adding. “And, by the way, I’m not allergic, so…”

  “Yeah, please send me the video. As for the flowers, trust me, these aren’t your type. They’re full of bugs.”

  ***

  Beckett sat alone in his lab, which was roughly the size of a large cubicle that was fully enclosed with an opaque door. There was a computer on the desk, typically reserved to print requisition forms, as well as all of the tools a pathologist needed to process specimens.

  And that’s what he was, in that moment; Beckett was no longer a killer, no longer someone desperately searching for the person who sent him the organs, but a pathologist.

  He sliced open the box on the table in front of him and folded back the cardboard. As expected, in addition to the white transplant bag inside, he found a note on yellow paper: ONE BEAT, TWO BEAT, THREE ‘PEAT.

  Beckett’s upper lip curled, and he debated putting the note on the scanner to decipher the hidden message as he’d done before. In the end, he decided against it.

  He was done with riddles and puzzles.

  Instead, Beckett opened the vinyl bag and stared down at another human heart.

  After removing it from the plastic biohazard bag, he picked it up with both hands and held it up to the light. Based on the size and color—it was a dark pink and lacked any overlying fat—it was apparently from another young person. He turned it in his hand, examining the precision by which it had been removed. The cuts weren’t perfect for a transplant; the aorta was slightly too long and the pulmonary artery too short. The superior vena cava, perhaps the most difficult vessel for an unskilled hand to remove, was jagged, reminding him of hesitation marks.

  Beckett frowned.

  He’d hoped that there was something in this newest delivery that would rule out Suzan and Grant—he was still holding onto the fleeting idea that he’d made a mistake about their involvement.

  But the cuts were consistent with those of a second year medical student. As for Grant, he’d had more training, more experience with autopsies. In fact—

  Beckett’s back straightened.

  The autopsy!

  Beckett replaced the heart in the bag first, and then put that inside the transplant cooler. Then he removed his gloves and bolted from the lab.

  Chapter 42

  “Out! Everyone out!” Beckett shouted as he entered the morgue. A junior ME named John Knox turned to look at him. When he saw who had entered, he pulled the mask off his nose and mouth.

  “Excuse me?”

  Beckett frowned.

  “I need the room for ten minutes. Out!” he repeated. Standing beside John was a woman that Beckett didn’t recognize.

  The woman turned and looked at John expectantly, and act that only served to infuriate Beckett further. Sullied reputation or not, he was still the Senior ME here.

  “I said, get out!”

  For a split second, it looked like John was going to refuse, but he eventually decided better of it and slammed the locker with the cadaver he was inspecting closed. As he made his way toward Beckett, he gestured for the woman to follow.

  “It’s only a matter of time, Beckett,” John whispered in his ear as he passed.

  Beckett scowled and bit his tongue.

  It’s only a matter of time before I fucking choke the life out of you, he thought.

  After John and his minion had left the room, Beckett hurried over to the row of lockers near the back. He scanned the names taped to the exterior, and eventually found what he was looking for: lockers identified by the name ‘Forensic Pathology’ further labeled with numbers R1 through R8.

  These contained the cadavers that Beckett had used on the first day of class, the ones that the residents had been tasked with determining the cause of death.

  He racked his brain and recalled that Grant McEwing had had the second body, one that he’d correctly diagnosed with liver failure.

  Beckett grabbed the handle of the locker with R-2 on it and pulled it open. A fan clicked off as he did and cool air rushed towards him. Then he yanked out the tray that the cadaver lay on.

  The man’s flesh was paler than it had been when Grant had cut him open, which was to be expected given that he’d spend two days in the locker. His rib cage as still open, but the skin flaps from the Y-incision had been folded back like a poorly wrapped gift.

  Beckett slipped on a pair of gloves and then slowly peeled back the man’s skin. He was obese and it took some effort to pull the thick blanket of yellow fat back to reveal the body cavity beneath. As expected, the organs had been replaced after Grant had initially removed them to determine cause of death.

  Crinkling his nose against the smell — the cooling process and the fan could only do so much — Beckett reached inside the body and pulled out the heart.

  It was much larger than the one in his lab and covered in fat, but that’s where the differences ended.

  Like the special delivery,
the aorta was too long and the pulmonary artery too short.

  But these could easily be chalked up to inexperience, mistakes that even a junior transplant resident might make. But when he turned the heart over, he saw something that was unique: hesitation marks on the superior vena cava.

  This was a surgical signature, if Beckett had ever seen one.

  “I’ve got you now,” he whispered to the dead.

  Chapter 43

  After replacing the heart in the cadaver’s chest and closing the locker, Beckett hurried back to his lab. He was more certain now than ever that Grant McEwing was the one sending him the organs, and also the one removing them, but he still didn’t know why.

  As for the notes… they had to be Suzan’s doing—that was the only thing that made sense. But what was the connection between them?

  Was it just the fact that she knew Brent Taylor and he was released to the halfway house funded by the McEwing Foundation?

  But that didn’t make sense… the timing would have had to have been perfect, given that the first organs—the liver and heart—were delivered on the day Brent was released.

  That was too… coincidental.

  Beckett pulled open the door to his lab and stepped inside. He started towards his computer, when his eyes fell on his desk.

  His empty desk.

  Beckett turned around briefly to confirm that this was indeed his office.

  It was.

  “What the fuck? What the fuck happened to the cooler?”

  His heart started to race again and he looked out into the hallway. There was no one to be found in either direction.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Was it John? Did he come in and steal the goddamn organ?

  Beckett reentered his office and blinked several times, trying to will the cooler back into existence. But it wasn’t there. His tools were still laid out as he had left them, but the entire bag—even the box—was missing.

  Beckett, grasping at straws now, got on all fours and looked beneath the desk.

  Nothing.

  He threw his hands up in frustration.

  What the fuck!

  Rising to his feet again, Beckett searched the entire lab for the box, knowing that if it wasn’t on the desk where he’d left it wasn’t there at all, but he was unable to help himself.

  After a minute, Becket gave.

  It was just another thread linking him to these crimes that he would have to wind up later.

  Right now, however, he needed to find a link between Suzan and Grant that predated Brent’s release from prison.

  Pulling up to his computer, he did a quick search on Grant McEwing. This was the easy part; the man had a press release dedicated to him following the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

  Grant McEwing, brother to Flo-Anne and son to the late Peter McEwing and long deceased Mary Beth McEwing, is a twenty-five year old recent graduate from McGill Medical School in Montreal, Quebec.

  Beckett drummed his fingers on the desk, but stopped when it didn’t sound right with one digit missing.

  McGill… McGill… who do I know at McGill?

  Beckett snapped his fingers, which was also awkward without a full-length middle finger.

  Diego!

  Another quick search and Beckett found his old residency buddy’s phone number.

  “Diego!” he exclaimed when the man answered, trying to push the fatigue and everything else from his mind.

  “Yes, this is Dr. Diego Lopez. Who’s this?”

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Diego, you’re supposed to go from waif to coquettish, not the other way around. Everyone knows that.”

  He could almost hear his friend smile on the and then the line.

  “Dr. Beckett Campbell, the only tatted up pathologist that I know who drives a motorcycle.”

  “Yeah, just another pretty face. How are you? Still recovering from our night out in Montréal?”

  “I’m always just recovering from a night out in Montréal.”

  “Good point. How are ya?”

  “Living the dream,” Diego replied. “Last time we spoke, you tricked me into telling you about one of my patients. I’m assuming you want something similar this time? After all, you are a needy bastard.”

  “What can I say, I’m an only child,” Beckett said with a chuckle. “Only this time, I don’t need to know about a patient, but a student.”

  “Really? This about that young girl you sent up here to do an internship a while back?”

  Beckett shook his head.

  “No, it’s about a medical student. His name is — wait, what girl? Girls I tend to remember, names, not so much.”

  “You said it was a favor for a cop buddy or something. Suzanne or Suzan Cuthbert or something like that. Jesus, Beckett you need to stay off the booze. Beckett? Earth to Beckett?”

  Beckett’s mouth hung open.

  Now that Diego mentioned it, he did remember sending Suzan to Montréal when he first heard she was interested in medicine a number of years back. As a favor to Drake.

  And that’s the connection, he thought, his heart sinking into the pit of his stomach.

  “Beckett? You still there?”

  Beckett was still on the phone, but his mouth was suddenly so dry that it felt as if he’d swallowed a handful of cotton balls.

  “Yeah,” he managed to croak. “I’m still here.”

  “What’s the name of the student you want to know about?”

  Again, Beckett struggled to swallow.

  “Grant McEwing; he was a medical student—graduated the year before last.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  Beckett started to strum his fingers again.

  “You sure? He’s got this freaky memory, possibly eidetic.”

  “I don’t know the name, but I can ask around, if you want.”

  What Beckett wanted was to get out of this nightmare. What he wanted was to never receive a random heart on his desk in the first place.

  What he wanted was for Suzan not to be involved.

  “Okay, thanks. Appreciate it, Diego.”

  “No problem. Let me know when you back in Montréal so we can get together again.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Take care, Diego.”

  Beckett hung up the phone and then collapsed in his chair.

  Chapter 44

  The only thing that kept Beckett going was the knowledge that if he didn’t act now, tomorrow morning there’d be another delivery waiting for him.

  Which mean that there’d been another murder.

  Tonight, he had to take out Grant. After that, he would figure out what to do with Suzan.

  On the way out of the morgue, he passed by the main lab, inside of which he spotted the junior ME, John Knox, sidling up to the woman who was with him earlier.

  Without thinking, Beckett opened the door and leaned inside.

  “John, If you don’t put the fucking box back on my desk by the time I come in tomorrow, you’re not gonna work another day as an ME in New York.”

  John whipped around.

  “What? What the hell are you talking about?”

  Beckett seethed.

  “One day; you have one day to put the box back.”

  With that, Beckett slammed the door closed hard enough to rattle it in its hinges. As he continued down the hallway, he spotted someone coming toward him.

  “Ron?” Beckett said, confusion washing over him. It certainly looked like Ron with skin was the color and texture of wax paper and sunken eyes.

  The man smiled as Beckett approached, his thin lips stretching and cracking. It was indeed Ron.

  “Beckett, just the man I was looking for. I heard it on the grapevine that Dr. Hollenbeck is looking for you. Apparently, you missed class today? Beckett, I’m feeling a little bit like your mother, here.”

  Beckett had completely forgotten about class and Dr. Hollenbeck.

  “Thanks, man. But I’m busy right now… can we chat later?” he asked as he walked b
y Ron.

  The man gave him a curious look, but nodded.