“My dad was a good man and an even better surgeon. But growing up… he just didn’t have much time for us. Often, when I was young, he’d leave me alone in his office while he was out working back to backs in residency. I’d have nothing to do but look at medical textbooks for hours on end. But I quickly ran out of material… I discovered that all I had to do was read a book once to remember everything within,” Beckett paused. “He spoke about you, by the way.”
This last part took Beckett by surprise.
He’d met Peter McEwing on several occasions; he’d even spent an entire month with the man on rotation during his residency. But that was more than a decade ago. It seemed improbable that Peter remembered him, unless, of course, he shared his son’s alleged memory.
“Yeah? And what did he say about me, Grant? All good things, I hope.”
Grant cleared his throat.
“He said… he said that you were different. That you weren’t like the others, that you weren’t an egocentric physician that had been forced into the profession by his folks.”
Beckett raised an eyebrow.
“He said this?”
Grant nodded.
“He and a colleague used to talk about you.”
“Flattery will get you… everywhere. Who was the colleague?”
Grant shrugged.
“I don’t remember.”
Beckett tried to maintain his composure. If Grant was indeed the person responsible for putting the organs on his desk, he was weaving one hell of an intricate yarn to cover his tracks.
What had started out as Beckett trying to grill Grant, to tease out if he was like the others, had turned into an ego-pumping affair about a late surgeon who was twenty years his senior.
And it was damn confusing… all of it.
But that didn’t change the fact that Grant was still holding back, that he had a secret.
“Grant, your dad died from liver cancer, is that correct?”
“Yes. He was diagnosed with stage IV liver cancer that quickly spread to his bones and eventually to his brain and heart. He was dead within six months.”
Grant’s tone was strangely flat and even, unlike when he was recounting the other parts of the story. Whatever Grant was, it was clear that he loved his father.
But patriarchal endearment wouldn’t save the man if he’d done what Beckett thought he had.
Nothing would.
“And there was no chance for a transplant? Replace his liver before the cancer spread?”
Grant replied in the same monotone voice.
“No. He wasn’t a candidate. Can I… can I go now? I’m not feeling well.”
Beckett nodded and watched Grant leave his office, more confused than when the man had first arrived.
Sure, Grant had a secret, but did he have a motive?
If Peter McEwing had been a candidate for a liver transplant but didn’t get one, then Beckett could imagine Grant taking his frustration out on others. It was far-fetched, certainly, but given that their family name was plastered above a state-of-the-art transplant facility, it was in the very least understandable.
But both Beckett and Grant knew that a person with stage IV liver cancer would never be a candidate.
Beckett’s phone buzzed on his desk and he quickly answered it.
“Dr. Campbell?” a screechy voice said.
“Lab Guy? What’s up?”
“I managed—” he lowered his voice before continuing. “I finished the DNA testing on the two hearts that you gave me. What do you want me to do with the results?”
Beckett’s eyes drifted to his computer. He was opposed to a paper trail, but heading back to the lab for a second time was apt to raise eyebrows.
“Email them to me. And then incinerate both organs.”
“Sure thing… and about that recommendation, do you think—”
“Yeah, yeah; I’m on it,” Beckett said as he hung up the phone.
Shaking his head, Beckett opened the email that Dolores had sent him, one that consisted of several video files. The first showed the hallway leading to his office with a timestamp from just after seven the day prior—not from the most recent delivery, but the second one. The second heart. About a minute in, a hooded figure suddenly appeared on the screen and Beckett felt his respiratory rate increase. Although the camera only showed the back of the man’s dark outfit, the posture was obviously that of a man’s. And tucked beneath his arm was a familiar-looking cardboard box.
“I’ve got you,” Beckett whispered as he opened the second video.
This one proved less helpful, as it only showed a quick glimpse of the man’s dark hoodie as he passed through the frame.
But halfway through the third video, the hooded figure turned and looked directly at the camera.
The glimpse only lasted a split-second, but it seemed like an eternity to Beckett, given that his breathing had stopped entirely.
Chapter 30
Beckett watched the video several more times, freezing the image of the person who had brought the organ to his office several times, just to be absolutely certain.
There was no mistaking who it was.
And yet, Beckett was having a hard time believing it.
It wasn’t so much who he had seen, but the underlying implications.
“It can’t be,” he said under his breath. “There’s no fucking way.”
And yet it was. The video proof was right there, right on his desktop computer.
“I thought I could trust you,” he whispered under his breath.
A new email notification popped up and Beckett instinctively opened it, minimizing the video.
As he’d instructed, the content of Lab Guy’s email was sparse and ambiguous. But the attachments were anything but: two DNA profiles, one from each of the most recent hearts that had been left on his desk.
Even though he knew the identity of the man who had dropped off the organs, it wasn’t enough. Beckett still needed concrete proof that he had actually killed the people and removed their hearts, not just desecrated a couple of corpses.
Many people did bad things, things that required retribution. But Beckett’s brand of punishment was reserved for only one specific act.
Murder.
He picked up his phone and dialed Detective Dunbar’s number.
I know what you are. I know what you did.
“Dunbar, it’s Beckett… Dr. Beckett Campbell. I’ve got one more favor to ask.”
There was an uncomfortable pause and Beckett wondered if he was overstepping.
“What do you need, Beckett?”
“Listen, I’ve got some John Does — two of them — both dead and I’m trying to figure out everything I can about them before I sign off on their cause of death. I need their medical history, but I don’t even have their names. Think you can help me out?”
There was another pause during which Beckett heard the man typing away furiously at his computer.
“Are they recent? I don’t see any records of homicides in the system from the last few days.”
“No, not homicides,” Beckett lied. “Most likely accidental deaths. But I need to be sure… using them as a test for new residents, which is why I need their medical history. I managed to convince the lab to get me a couple of DNA profiles. The thing is, I still can’t find their names. Think you can run the profiles through CODIS or missing persons?”
“Missing persons and accidental deaths… this isn’t really my department,” Dunbar replied.
Fuck.
Beckett debated pushing the man, but decided against it. Dunbar already knew too much for his liking.
“I understand. Thanks anyway.”
“Wait a second—just wait. What is this really about? I don’t hear from you since… the incident… and now you call about car accidents and missing persons? What’s going on?”
Beckett swallowed hard.
“Nothing, I just—”
“Is this,” Dunbar lowered his voice.
“Is this about what happened with Drake and the mayor… the club?”
And there it was; Dunbar himself had just given Beckett an out.
He cleared his throat.
“I can’t… I can’t reveal confidential information, as I’m sure you understand, Dunbar,” Beckett said. “But… hypothetically speaking, this might be related to something bigger.”
This wasn’t a lie—not exactly. There was something bigger going on here, and despite how much he loathed the idea, Beckett found himself in the middle of it.
Again.
His own words repeated in his mind then, some of the last ones that he remembered saying to his friend Damien Drake.
No matter how hard you try to do the right thing, you just end up dragging everyone into the mud with you. Everyone, from Jasmine to Clay, to me, to Screech, you pull us all down.
Beckett couldn’t help feeling like he was doing the same thing…
“Yeah, sure, I get. Send me the profiles and I’ll see what I can do. No promises, but I do understand the sensitive nature of the request,” Dunbar replied at last.
Chapter 31
Suzan called a half-dozen times, but Beckett just let it ring out.
For once, he was indecisive as to what to do next. The last thing he wanted to do was to rush things, as he’d almost done with Grant, and make a mistake that he’d never been able to live with.
As for the person on the video, he’d have to wait until the cover of darkness to act on that.
But Beckett needed to do something… he needed to clear his mind for a few hours. As he saw it, his options were twofold: he could go to the bar and get drunk, ask Ron to join him—the man wouldn’t need convincing—or he could see if any of the junior medical examiners needed his help.
He would much rather do the former, but if Beckett wanted to reclaim his status as the go-to Senior Medical Examiner, then he had to put in some face time. Besides, he had a favor he needed to return and there was no time like the present.
With a labored sigh, Beckett logged into the Medical Examiners portal. There were four active cases, two of which were suicides, while one was a gunshot homicide and the other one was unknown. But he wasn’t looking for a particular case, he was looking for a particular Medical Examiner.
And, as luck would have it, in the column listing the MEs name beside the case where the cause of death was still listed as ‘unknown’, he saw Karen Nordmeyer.
Beckett clicked on the small clipboard icon to access more detailed notes.
The subject was an 81-year-old woman by the name of Greta Armatridge. She had lacerations on her scalp and the police report stated that she’d been found in a pool of blood at the bottom of a staircase. It seemed cut and dry to Beckett, but it had already been fourteen hours and Karen had yet to sign off on the case.
Beckett packed up his things and made his way out of the office. As he passed Delores’s desk, he felt a heaviness in his chest.
He hated the way he’d acted toward her, the way she now looked at him with fear in her eyes.
“Ryan Reynolds?” Beckett asked. “You sure?”
Dolores looked momentarily confused, but then nodded.
“Yeah… why are you asking me this?”
“No reason,” Beckett said as he continued past.
***
Karen Nordmeyer looked up when Beckett entered the morgue. She was a mousy woman, with small features and brown hair that fell to her shoulders. Short, stocky, but intuitive and smart.
“Dr. Campbell,” she said in a curious manner that was equal parts question, statement, and accusation.
“Dr. Nordmeyer,” Beckett replied, doing his best to impersonate her tone.
“Did I… did I make a mistake? Is this about the Winston Trent case? Was I—”
Beckett shook his head.
“No, you did great—thank you for closing it as quickly as you did. The media… fucking vultures, I tell ya. If you had hesitated on reporting the cause of death as a suicide, you’d have spent the next year or so answering questions. Trust me on this one.”
Karen nodded, but the look of confusion remained on her face.
“Are you missing a report, or…”
Beckett slipped on a pair of latex gloves.
“Nope, I was just bored and decided to swing by to see if you needed a hand. You know, returning the favor.”
Confusion became relief—for both of them.
It appeared as if not everyone in ME community hated Beckett, or feared him, after what had happened with Craig Sloan.
Beckett walked over to the body and stared down at the nude octogenarian.
“Thank God, because I can use all the help I can get on this one,” Karen said.
Chapter 32
Karen was right; this was a more difficult case than Beckett had first thought. And it only became more confusing when she shared the crime scene photographs with him.
In most of them, 84-year-old Greta Armatridge lay at the bottom of the stairs her feet extending into the hallway, her neck and head resting on the second to last step. This wasn’t terribly unusual, but the sheer volume of blood was.
It was smeared on the walls, on the final few stairs, and pooled about her head in a viscous puddle.
“I’ve already shaved her head,” Karen said, indicating the top of the woman skull. “As you can see, there are seven long incisions — but it looks like at least two of them are from a single impact.”
Beckett craned his neck to get a better look.
There were indeed seven incisions, each one of them were four to five inches long, deep enough to reveal bone beneath. They were long and deep, but weren’t perfectly straight; they seemed to have a natural curve to them, Beckett noted.
“What about blunt force trauma?” he asked, even though he was fairly certain he knew the answer already.
“None; no evidence of subdural hemorrhage.”
Beckett held the photograph from the crime scene close to his face, paying close attention to the individual stairs. In total, there were maybe fifteen or sixteen of them — it was tough to tell for certain based on the angle of the image — but there only appeared to be blood on the bottom three or four.
“She definitely died from blood loss, there’s no question about that. But the thing I don’t get is why there’s no blood on the stairs near the top. I mean, even if she did a somersault off the top landing, the first impact would have been no more than halfway down,” Karen said.
“If she fell from the top, I would expect blunt force injuries to her skull and brain,” Beckett informed her.
“Yeah… but we can’t rule it out entirely. I mean, look at the wounds, see how they’re curved?”
Beckett nodded.
“I see that, but they are most definitely from the stairs.”
“But rounded like that?”
“Yep. A round object moving perpendicular to a flat edge—such as the edge of a stair—will give the impression that they were caused by a curved object.”
“Huh. Didn’t know that. But the blood? Why only at the bottom? If she fell down the stairs like her husband who found her claimed…”
Beckett chewed the inside of his lip.
“The husband said that? That she fell down the stairs?”
Karen grabbed a folder off the table beside them and opened it. Then she started to read the statement.
“Husband made his way back inside after an evening out on the porch, only to find his wife at the bottom of the stairs. He couldn’t tell if she was breathing and immediately called 9-1-1,” Karen flipped to another page. “Ah, here it is, in the 9-1-1 call: Please, my wife… she fell down the stairs and there’s so much blood… you need to send someone…”
“Well, that’s just not true.”
Karen put the piece of paper down and looked at him, eyebrow raised.
“She didn’t fall down the stairs? How can you tell?”
Beckett walked around the woman’s body and pointed at a
small scuff mark on her chin. Then he used two fingers to pry open her mouth and ran them along her bottom teeth. Beckett doubted that they were Mrs. Armatridge’s real teeth, but that didn’t matter; they were rough enough to nearly cut his gloves.
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