Human Traffic

by Patrick Logan

  He was almost at the T-intersection when he saw the school bus. It was traveling perpendicular to him and was starting to chug through the intersection.

  Drake grit his teeth and bore down. He had enough faith in both his driving ability and his Crown Vic, but it was still going to be close. Bringing his car all the way to the left side of the road, he got as close to the curb as possible. A split second before he t-boned the bus, he jammed the wheel hard to the left, while at the same time slamming on the break.

  The Crown Vic was too old to have antilock breaks, which allowed him to skid dramatically through the intersection, passing within inches of the front of the bus.

  The driver leaned on the horn, but he ignored the sound. And then, as Drake had predicted, the man braked hard, completely blocking the intersection behind him.

  Confident that the police car would have to loop back if they were to continue the chase, Drake made several turns down side streets.

  After five minutes passed without seeing them again, he felt his body relax.

  He’d lost them — for now.

  But he knew he wasn’t out of the woods yet. His car was too obvious, too conspicuous. As much as the thought pained him, he knew that he had to get rid of it.

  Drake drove quickly to the only place that he thought he would be safe, where he could hide out at least until they discovered the location of the auction.

  He just hoped that someone was home.

  After turning down a narrow alley next to the rundown apartment complex, he got out of his car. The neighborhood was shady, and while he loved his crown Vic dearly, he loved his freedom more.

  With a sigh and a gentle caress of the hood, Drake tossed his car keys on the front seat through the half-open window.

  “Veronica, you better be home. Because I’m no shape to do any walking.”

  Drake knew that within a few hours in this neighborhood, his car would be gone.

  Chapter 37

  After putting on a fresh pair of clothes, Beckett took the bag from the shower and threw it in the trunk of his car. As he got behind the wheel, he popped a few caffeine pills that he still had from his late nights in residency and dry swallowed them.

  Then he put the car into drive.

  Although he had never formally been suspended after what had happened with Craig Sloan, unofficially he had been relegated to paperwork for the time being. And yet, he still had some clout when it came to the junior MEs. If there was a case he wanted, Beckett was fairly certain he could get it.

  And there was one in particular that he very much needed to be a part of.

  The only problem was, he couldn’t rightly request a specific case without raising eyebrows — that wasn’t how it worked. And he definitely couldn’t request one that hadn’t even been called in yet.

  Beckett returned to the scene of the crime, cruising slowly around the neighborhood — not so close to Bob’s house to raise suspicion, but close enough that he would see the police arrive.

  It took nearly an hour before the first squad car appeared.

  This was quickly followed by a second and a third.

  And yet, Beckett continued to wait. When the air was inundated with both police and ambulance sirens, he started toward the house.

  Beckett parked as close to the scene as he could, then hopped out of his car. Almost immediately, a police officer blocked his path.

  “I’m sorry, but this street is closed. You’re going to have to—”

  Beckett pulled out his medical examiner badge and flashed it.

  “Dr. Beckett Campbell, ME. I was in the neighborhood and heard the sirens. What’s going on?”

  The officer hooked a chin toward the door of Bob Bumacher’s house.

  “It’s a fucking shit show in there. It looks like—”

  At that moment, a police officer exited the house, his arm draped around the young boy in the pajamas. As the first officer droned on, the boy walked directly in front of Beckett on his way to a squad car.

  This was the moment of truth: if the boy saw him, if he recognized Beckett, all bets were off.

  The smartest thing to do was to retreat until the boy was gone, but he needed to know. He needed to know if the boy remembered him.

  Their eyes met and for a split-second recognition seemed to wash over the boy’s features. And then, in a blink, it was gone.

  Beckett felt the tightness that gripped his organs relax.

  The trauma of the incident inside his home had messed with the boy’s memories, it seemed. At least for now.

  “Yeah?” The officer asked.

  Beckett shook his head.

  “What’s that?”

  “I asked if you were on duty, if you’re going to come inside. We need a medical examiner to clear the body.”

  Beckett nodded.

  “I’ve got my bag in the car. You’re still going to have to call it in, but when you do, just let him know that Dr. Campbell’s already on the scene, that I was in the neighborhood.”

  The officer agreed and reached for his walkie-talkie to communicate with dispatch.

  With a sigh of relief, Beckett walked back to his car and grabbed the bag from the front seat.

  One down, one to go, he thought as he made his way toward Bob Bumacher’s house.

  ***

  “It looks like the perp gained entry into the home via the window over the sink. Used a crowbar that we found in the safe room.”

  Beckett raised an eyebrow as he walked from the kitchen to the family room.

  “Safe room?”

  The officer, a middle-aged man with a paunch around his middle and a thin bristly mustache, shrugged.

  “Something like that. The door was reinforced, but the attacker managed to break the lock. We found a couple of shotguns and a bag of heroin inside. I already called in some techs to work on the computer… if I were a betting man, I’d bet the house on finding something naughty on it.”

  As Beckett strode over to the room, the reek of coagulated blood that hung in the air grew stronger.

  The sheer violence of the scene took his breath away. Even though it had been his doing, Beckett could barely wrap his mind around what he saw.

  A shirtless Bob Bumacher was laying on his back with his right arm curled beneath him. There was a gaping hole in his neck roughly the size of a softball, and blood pooled beneath his bald head and coated his bare chest.

  The officer who squatted by the body looked up as Beckett approached.

  “Dr. Campbell, ME.”

  The officer nodded, then said, “Looks like he bled out.”

  No shit, Sherlock.

  “Also, there’s something in his hand,” the officer continued, reaching for Bob’s right arm. “Looks like—”

  “Don’t touch the body,” Beckett ordered. “No one is to touch the body before I clear it.”

  The officer recoiled and put his hands in the air.

  “Shit, sorry. I wasn’t going to touch it, I just wanted to show you something.”

  Beckett frowned.

  “Nobody’s to touch the body,” he repeated in a condescending tone.

  The officer grumbled something about how he hated doctors, but retreated behind Beckett without addressing him directly.

  Heart racing, Beckett walked over to Bob and stared down at his body for a moment, trying to act normal.

  But there was nothing normal about the situation.

  I did this, he thought absently. I was the one responsible for this carnage.

  Beckett squatted, positioning himself between the body and the door, hoping that he was blocking the police officer’s line of sight. Then he set his black bag down on top of Bob’s right arm.

  After slipping a pair of lab gloves on, he did a routine overview of the body, as he always did. First, he checked for a pulse — there was none, of course — and then set about looking for any wounds on the man’s body aside from the obvious. There was only one: a small red pinprick of blood on his left bicep
s from where the needle of Midazolam had struck him. But Beckett only saw this because he knew what to look for.

  It would take at least a few days for anyone else to notice, and a week or so for the tox screen to come back. That would give him enough time to erase any evidence that he’d been here.

  Or so Beckett hoped.

  Working quickly, he reached into his bag and took out a large plastic specimen container and a pair of tweezers. Then he used the latter to inspect Bob’s ruined neck, pretending to search for any fragments of a weapon that might have remained in the wound.

  As he performed this charade, Beckett used his other hand to reach into the bag again and grab the clean balaclava from within.

  Then, with a sleight-of-hand that would make even the most expert of magicians proud, Beckett placed this new balaclava over the old one. Rigor had already started to set in, and it took a sharp yank to free the balaclava from the man’s dead fingers, which Beckett disguised by pretending to momentarily lose his balance. This distraction also allowed him to put the original balaclava into his bag without being seen.

  Satisfied, Beckett stood and turned back to the officer whose gaze was transfixed on the corpse.

  “Well? Any ideas?” the man asked excitedly.

  “Ideas?” Beckett repeated with a frown. “My idea is that the guy is dead. Bag his hands and get CSU in here as soon as possible.”

  Chapter 38

  “Don’t tase me,” Drake said, his arms in the air. “Veronica, it’s me. If you’re in there, please don’t tase me.”

  A sleepy-looking Veronica opened the door, sans Taser, Drake noted.

  “Drake? What are you doing here? I told you—”

  “I need a place to crash, Veronica.”

  Veronica observed him suspiciously for a moment, before stepping aside.

  “I may not have my Taser on me, but if you try anything, I won’t hesitate to get it out.”

  Drake shook his head as he stepped inside the apartment.

  “I’m not—”

  He stopped cold. Mandy was seated at the vanity brushing her long blond hair.

  “Mandy? What the hell are you doing here? Sgt. Yasiv said that…” he let his sentence trail off as Mandy turned to look at him.

  “I couldn’t stay there,” she said as if this simple explanation was sufficient.

  It wasn’t.

  “What do you mean, you couldn’t stay there?”

  Before Mandy could answer, Veronica stepped between them.

  “I found her wandering the streets, Drake, near where you dropped me off. As soon as I started talking to her, I realized that this was the girl you and Screech told me about… I took her under my wing, and—”

  Drake’s eyes bulged.

  “You what? You took her under your wing? You had her turning—”

  Something in Veronica’s face change then. Her pretty features suddenly became ugly and she stepped forward and pinched the back of Drake’s arm.

  “Come with me,” she hissed. “Come with me right now before I tase your ass.”

  Drake was too exhausted and confused to resist and allowed himself to be guided toward the side of the room opposite Mandy. Veronica pushed aside an ornamental curtain, revealing a doorknob. In a flash, she opened the door and shoved Drake through.

  The entire sequence passed as a blur to Drake; he had no idea that there was a separate room adjacent to this one, let alone a full apartment, like the one he found himself in now.

  The decor was simple yet classy, but before Drake could take it all in, Veronica pinched his arm again and drew his attention back.

  “Don’t you do that,” she said in a harsh tone. “Don’t you fucking do that.”

  Drake’s brow knitted.

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t you judge me — me or her. The girl back there? She’s an adult. If she wants to work the streets, she can work the streets. This is my job, Drake, my profession. And I’m good at it — damn good at it. I’m not some meth-head who’s only turning tricks to get my next high, and neither is she. This my — our — choice, and you have no right to judge us.”

  Drake was taken aback by the woman’s outburst.

  In truth, he hadn’t really put much into what Veronica did. He knew from his past experience with Veronica that she dealt with affluent clients who paid big money to spend the night with her. And she could most definitely take care of herself. And yet, when the woman had mentioned that she’d taken Mandy under her wing, something just felt intrinsically wrong.

  But it wasn’t wrong. Sure, it might be illegal, but that was bullshit — an archaic law based on some religious nonsense that no longer held any meaning. Who was he to tell a woman what she could or couldn’t do with her own body? Provided that it was safe and voluntary, what right did anyone have to tell a women how they plied their trade, be it basket weaving or prostitution?

  Drake lowered his eyes, suddenly feeling ashamed.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that she was exploited back and—”

  Veronica pinched him again.

  “I’m not exploited and I don’t exploit people. I resent the accusation.”

  Drake apologized a second time.

  “I didn’t mean it that way—look, Veronica, I’m sorry. I’m exhausted and I just need a place to crash.”

  Veronica looked him up and down, and it soon became clear that it was her who felt sorry for him and not the other way around.

  “If anybody’s being exploited here, it’s you,” she said with conviction.

  Me? Exploited? By whom?

  But Drake couldn’t mount these questions; he could barely think straight.

  “This way,” she said and Drake followed.

  Veronica led him to a bedroom that couldn’t be more opposite than the one he’d just exited. Whereas he was used to the massive bedposts and dozens of various sized pillows in the main room, this one contained only a simple, plain wooden bed.

  “Lie down, get some rest. When you wake up, I’ll tell you what I found out about the auction.”

  Drake was in the process of doing just that — lying down — when Veronica mentioned the auction. He tried to sit back up, to ask questions, but he’d reached the point of no return.

  He was out in seconds.

  Chapter 39

  Normally after visiting a crime scene, Beckett returned to the hospital to fill out forms. Only this time, after jotting a few notes — mostly for show given that he knew the exact time and cause of death — he went back to his apartment. There, he showered again as a final precaution: if the crime was ever linked back to him, the police would tear his place apart looking for evidence. They would scour the sinks, the drain, the damn sewer pipe if they had to. If they found something from Bob in his house, he’d now have a logical explanation for it being there, given that he was the lead ME on the case.

  Finally satisfied, Beckett inspected the tattoo that he’d given himself, made sure that there were no signs of infection, and rubbed some antibiotic ointment on it. Then he got dressed again in something new. The caffeine pills he’d taken earlier had started to wear off, so Beckett brewed himself a nice strong pot of coffee.

  Sipping his coffee, Beckett pulled the yacht manifest out of his pocket. It detailed plans to leave from Manhattan Harbor at 9 AM, and arrive in Colombia four days later. It even had the projected ocean currents and weather all mapped out.

  Four days to get to Colombia, one day to pick up the cargo, four days to get back, Beckett thought, with a stop in the Virgin Gorda on the return leg.

  This was something he couldn’t let happen. Even if the girls managed to survive the journey this time, if the heroin laced with fentanyl derivatives made it onto US soil, the number of overdoses would be astronomical.

  He tapped the side of his coffee mug.

  Despite having the manifest in his hand, hard evidence that Bob was involved in this scheme, something still wasn’t adding up: the girls were found in a shipping contai
ner, not on a yacht.

  Beckett closed his eyes and thought back to his time in the Virgin Gorda when he’d first seen B-Yacht’ch.

  There were the models, the ones that Donnie DiMarco was taking photos of, and there was the skid of heroin. There definitely weren’t any shipping containers, though, at least none that he could recall. But Beckett didn’t completely trust his memory; after all, he’d been drunk half the time and high the rest.