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

by Patrick Logan

  Unlike how he’d yanked the tarp, Flo-Ann peeled it back slowly, gradually revealing Beckett’s smiling face.

  Flo-Ann’s pretty face went white and she tried to retreat to the door. But her heels slipped and she fell to the ground much like Beckett had minutes earlier.

  That's when Beckett lunged, leading with the syringe. Flo-Ann didn't even get her hands up before he injected her in the side of the neck.

  “I know what you are,” he whispered in her ear as he started to struggle beneath him. “I know what you did.”

  Chapter 49

  Beckett stood over top of Flo-Ann’s body as her eyes slowly fluttered and then eventually opened.

  A characteristic look of confusion washed over her pretty features, but these eventually turned into a sneer. She tried to sit up, but the best she could do was move her head.

  Her eyes drifted to the leather straps that held her arms out to her sides and then the ones that spread her legs. Beckett had stripped to her bra and underwear, and when she realized this, her face transitioned from a sneer to a smile.

  “Nice set up you have here,” Beckett said, looking about the room.

  It was almost fitting that he killed her here, in the same room that she’d taken the lives of the four recently paroled men and young boys.

  “Why can’t I move?” Flo-Ann asked.

  Beckett held a the half-empty syringe.

  “Succinylcholine,” he said. “The perfect killing drug. I only injected half the required dose, mind you; not enough to paralyze your heart or diaphragm. Only your muscles.”

  Even though Flo-Ann had the cold eyes of a killer, Beckett still needed her to say it. He needed her to say that she had killed those men and boys, before he went through with it.

  Beckett picked up a scalpel and held it up to the incandescent lights above. It reflected harshly on Flo-Ann’s face.

  “Why did you kill them, Flo-Ann?” Beckett asked in an almost bored tone.

  The sneer returned.

  “My dad was a good man… no, a great man. What he did for others, including the people in this halfway house and the people he saved as a surgeon? He deserved better. But when he needed help, when he needed a new liver, you think that he could get one?”

  Beckett listened intently, waiting for the confession he needed to hear.

  “He was on the donor list for six months, but by the time his name popped up, he was as good as dead. The cancer had spread to his heart and his brain. He was reduced to a bumbling idiot unable to wipe his own ass, let alone save anybody.”

  Beckett bit his tongue. This was a common refrain among socio- and psychopaths like Flo-Ann; they justified their actions any way they could. But even if Peter McEwing had died from a old-age at 103, Flo-Ann would have found another reason to kill.

  Beckett knew this, because he felt the same urge.

  His fingers were tingling so intensely now that he could barely hold the scalpel steady. His face was flushed and sweat started to break out on his brow.

  “You know why I sent the organs to you, Beckett?”

  Beckett shook his head and leaned forward. He placed the scalpel on Flo-Ann’s skin, just below where her collar bone met her shoulder.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Because you’re like me,” she said. Beckett started to slide the blade into her flesh, reveling in the way that it cut through the connective tissue as easily as a hot knife through butter. Flo-Ann didn’t even notice; the succinylcholine had numbed her entirely.

  For now.

  “I’m not like you,” Beckett replied in a flat affect.

  He pushed the blade deeper and moved it to the center of her chest.

  “Oh, yes you are. It was only an accident that I saw you outside of Winston Trent’s house—just an accident. I don’t even usually go to that neighborhood, but I was following one of the juvenile delinquents that my dad saved, who was stealing from the halfway house.”

  Beckett drew the scalpel to her belly button, splitting her flesh and leaving a trail of blood behind. Then he started again from her opposite shoulder, completing the Y-incision.

  “I couldn’t believe it at first. In fact, I wouldn’t have even have recognized if you weren’t on the Board of Directors for the McEwing Transplant Unit. So that’s why I sent the organs to you, because I knew you were like me. We can work together, we can—”

  Flo-Ann’s eyes suddenly fluttered and rolled back as blood spilled out of the Y-incision and coated her alabaster flesh.

  Beckett was amazed that she hadn’t yet clued into what was going on.

  “We can still… work… together…”

  The woman grunted as Beckett peeled her skin back and then moaned when he cracked her sternum. Not only was Flo-Ann’s kill room well-equipped to remove organs, but Beckett had even found one of the organ transplant bags that she’d stolen from the McEwan Transplant Unit.

  As he reached inside her body cavity, her mouth opened and blood spilled onto her cheeks.

  And yet, she didn’t scream, which Beckett assumed was partly from the paralytic and partly because she knew that this was coming. She must have known that it was destined to end like this.

  “You’re… like… me…” Flo-Ann managed between coughs and spatters of blood.

  Beckett worked quickly now, knowing that with the amount of blood she was losing, it would only be a matter of time before she died.

  But unlike Flo-Ann, Beckett had training—considerably more than just two years of medical school.

  As he reached inside Flo-Ann’s chest cavity and finally pulled her heart free, he held it up for the woman to see a second before her eyes rolled back in her head. Then, covered in the woman’s blood, Beckett leaned close to her ear.

  “You and I are nothing alike.”

  Chapter 50

  Beckett showered with his clothes on first, cleansing himself of any of Flo-Anne’s DNA, before putting them in a bag while still in the shower. Then he scrubbed himself with antiseptic soap as if he were a surgeon preparing to operate.

  Then he tied up the bag and left it in the tub. He would incinerate it later back at the lab.

  After drying off, Beckett went to his bedside table and pulled out a black leather attaché case. Only this one wasn’t filled with syringes or scalpels, but a homemade tattoo kit.

  With a deep breath, he prepared the ink and then lifted his right arm. As he stared at the six lines that were already, Beckett recited the names they represented.

  “Craig Sloan, Donnie DiMarco, Ray Reynolds, Bob Bumacher, Boris Brackovich, Winston Trent.”

  And then, with a characteristic wince, he started to tattoo a new line, this time adding another name to his collection.

  “Flo-Ann McEwing.”

  When he was done, Beckett placed saran wrap over the new tattoo.

  Exhausted, he made his way back to his bed and for the first time in a long time, ever since the night he’d killed Winston Trent, Beckett slept soundly and without nightmares.

  ***

  “Morning, Delores,” Beckett said with a grin. He sipped his coffee and then put another cup on the woman’s desk.

  Delores looked at him with a curious expression.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Extra tall mocha one pump with cream, just the way you like it,” he replied with a wink.

  Delores stared at them as if he had three heads.

  “Oh, and you know Ryan Reynolds? Because I do,” he said. “Well, not really. Last time he was here filming in town one of the directors came to me to fix a problems… crabs, you know how it is. Anyways, as luck would have it he’s in town tonight for a gala and he brought Ran with him. I called in a favor and put your name on the guest list.”

  Dolores blinked several times and Beckett thought for a moment that she might pass out.

  “I really am sorry about the other day, Dolores,” Beckett said, his tone turning serious. “Anyways, why don’t you take the rest the day off and get
you saw something pretty to wear for tonight.”

  With that, Beckett turned and started toward his office.

  “Dr. Campbell?”

  “Yes?”

  “I got footage from the hallway the other day, just as you asked,” Delores said, holding a USB key out to him.

  Beckett frowned and took it.

  “Thanks,” he replied hesitantly and made his way to his office.

  Beckett took a seat behind his computer and loaded the video.

  Halfway through, his coffee cup slipped from his hand and spilled to the floor.

  “No fucking way.”

  Chapter 51

  Beckett waited in the dark. At around 9:30, the door opened and a light flicked on.

  The man who entered dropped his briefcase and then made his way toward the kitchen. Halfway there, he spotted Beckett sitting comfortably in his lounge chair, an expensive bottle of Scotch clutched in one hand.

  “I see you brought a bottle he promised me,” Dr. Ron Stransky said, a smile on his face.

  Beckett rose to his feet and held the bottle out to him.

  “Better than that swill you drink,” he said.

  Ron nodded and started to say something, before his eyes drifted to the other item that Beckett had brought with him to the man’s house.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Ron asked as he stared at the white vinyl bag.

  Beckett nodded.

  “I figured as much,” Ron said. “I figured that it would come down to this.”

  Beckett still said nothing even as he walked over to his old friend and lifted the hem of his shirt. Beneath, he saw a large section of gauze that covered most of the right part of his stomach.

  “All those years of drinking caught up to you, didn’t they?”

  Ron nodded.

  “I’ve lived a good life, Beckett. I won’t deny that. And I won’t make any excuses.”

  It was a curious choice of words, and Beckett let them sink in for a moment.

  “It wasn’t hard to find someone like Flo-Ann to help me out,” Ron continued. “But she just couldn’t control herself. One liver, I said. Just one. To be honest, if you hadn’t taken her out when you did, then I probably would have.”

  Beckett slowly took the scalpel out of his pocket. He prepared himself in case Ron started to run or tried to fight him, but the man didn’t even flinch; he was too frail from his recent liver transplant.

  “Why me? I understood why you got Flo-Ann involved, but why me? Was it just that she saw me with Winston Trent.”

  Ron sighed and shook his head.

  “You remember back in residency? The night that we are in the ‘merge alone? There was supposed to be an attending there, but he’d left to screw one of the nurses. It was just you and me—remember?”

  Beckett racked his brain but only managed to come up with a choppy recollection.

  Ron nodded.

  “The cops came that night, brought a man involved in a home invasion. But he wasn’t a victim; he was the one who broke into the home and tried to abduct a seven-year-old girl. Remember that? The father shot him and the man in the ‘merge returned fire. But while the father died at the scene, the intruder was brought to our hospital.”

  Images started flooding back now, filling Beckett’s mind with stills of a man covered in blood, screaming that he was dying, that he’d been shot in the leg.

  To… please, God, save me! I don’t want to die!

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “I gave the case to you and took a supervisory role. It was a simple fix—fuse the femoral artery. Likely, he would have lost his leg, but he would have survived. But what did you do? You delayed, asking for more tests, citing nonsense about allergies or some other shit. Do you remember that?”

  Beckett closed his eyes tightly and shook his head.

  I don’t — I don’t remember,” he said.

  “Well I do. I’ll never forget the day when you let the man bleed out right there on the operating table when you could have saved him. I’ll never forget it, because I saw something in your eyes then. That’s when I learned what you were like—what you were really like. I’m just surprised it took you so long to figure out for yourself.”

  A tear ran down Beckett’s cheek as he raised the scalpel. Ron surprised by holding up a hand.

  “I’ve made my peace, Beckett; I’m just hoping that you can allow me one last thing before you take my life.”

  Beckett lowered the blade a quarter inch.

  “What?”

  Ron’s eyes flicked to the bottle in Beckett’s hand.

  “Just a drink—one drink. It’s a shame to let that good stuff go to waist. Let me have one drink before it’s all over.”

  Epilogue

  “Suzan? What are you doing here?” Beckett asked.

  Suzan was sitting on his porch steps, her face buried in her hands. When she pulled her face free, her eyes were raw and her cheeks were damp with tears.

  Beckett ran to her then, wrapping his arms around her.

  “What happened?”

  Suzan didn’t answer; instead, she grabbed the newspaper from beside on the stoop and held it out to him. Beckett only needed to read the headline to know why she was crying.

  On it, was a picture of a young Dr. Ron Stransky. The headline read: Prestigious surgeon murders five to harvest organs for himself.

  It was like something out of our novel.

  Beckett swallowed hard.

  “Brent… Brent was one of Dr. Stransky’s victims,” Suzan said between sobs. Beckett squeezed her even tighter. After several moments, she pushed him away and the rubbed her eyes.

  “You care,” she said in a whisper. “You pretend not to, but I know you care. You were there that night outside halfway house because you care, because you were looking for him—for Brent—weren’t you?”

  Beckett stared at her pretty face, her soggy cheeks, before answering.

  He nodded.

  She was already broken; there was no point destroying her completely.

  Suzan nodded back and Beckett cradled her head in his arms.

  After a few minutes, Beckett’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out.

  It was a message from his friend Diego in Montréal.

  No record of Grant McEwing ever attending medical school here, sorry bud. When you coming to visit, anyway?

  “Who is it?” Suzan asked.

  Beckett turned off his phone and slipped back into his pocket.

  “Nothing,” he replied, pulling her to their feet. “Hey, how aboutwe take the rest of the week off and go on a mini vacation?”

  Suzan looked up a him with a knitted brow.

  “I thought you hated vacations?”

  “I hate the sun and the beach, but I love Montréal. What do you say?”

  Suzan wrapped her arm around his waist. When her fingers brushed against his side, Beckett winced.

  “I guess we should start packing, then. What’s wrong with your side, anyway?”

  Beckett started up the steps to his house.

  “Nothing. Just got some new ink done—two new tattoos. Come on, let’s go pack.”

  END