Dane’s candidness was shocking, and Drake didn't dare interrupt. The man slung his bag over one shoulder and then started toward the treeline, swinging his cutlass pre-emptively.
“I knew about life and death, of course; I wasn’t a child,” he continued. “But I saw things… I saw such suffering. Ray only knew how to deal with it one way, and I saw that, too.”
His brother delivered a particularly savage swipe to an outcropping of ferns and Drake got the idea, loud and clear. And he understood, in a way; after all, he’d been a shell of his former self ever since the day Clay had been murdered.
“I came here, to South America. Started living off the land, all that shit. Traveling. Trying to clear my head, to find somewhere in this world that wasn’t suffering. But that place just doesn’t exist. I met people along the way, people with connections back in New York. Powerful people, people who—”
“Ken Smith.”
Drake couldn't help himself this time. He came up next to his brother and started hacking at the foliage as the jungle became denser.
“People who knew him, people like him, anyway,” Dane confirmed. “People like me.”
The comment took Drake by surprise. His brother wasn't like Ken Smith, he wasn't like Raul, and he wasn't like Wesley Smith.
His brother was a good man. Twice, Dane had saved his life now. Once at Ray Reynolds’s farm when Drake had almost taken his own life, and then here in Colombia.
His brother wasn’t an uncaring, megalomaniac seeking power above all else.
For fuck’s sake, he was his brother.
Images of the dead bodies in the diner threatened to break this impression, but Drake forced them away.
“Where we going, Dane?” he asked, changing the subject.
Dane gripped his cutlass even tighter as he turned to look at him.
“We're going to put an end to this, Drake. We're going to put an end to this suffering once and for all.”
Chapter 37
“Nope,” Hanna said, crossing her arms defiantly. “No fucking way in heaven or hell am I wearing that.”
Screech smirked, thinking about how she’d thrown him under the bus the night before at Leroy’s dinner.
“You have to—you have to wear the dress. It’s the only way you’re gonna get into this.”
Hanna took the dress, which was a step in the right direction, and held it at arm’s length. It was pink, it had lace, and it had poof. Plenty of poof.
Leroy guffawed.
“It looks like a fucking debutante ball dress, Screech. She looks like a woman being auctioned off to her uncle!”
That was it. The stress combined with the ridiculous imagery pushed Screech over the edge.
He burst out laughing.
In fact, Screech laughed so hard that he actually bent at the waist.
“You got a tiara for me to wear, as well?”
Hanna’s question made Screech collapse to the floor. His laughter had become so debilitating that he could barely reach into the bag that the dress had come in. After watching this for a few moments, Hanna, still scowling, snatched the bag from him and reached inside.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
She took the tiara out and launched it across the room.
Leroy was in stitches now as well, hollering and slapping at his thighs.
The fact that Hanna was standing there watching them, stone-faced, arms crossed over her chest, only made Screech laugh harder. It took a good five whole minutes for the two of them to stop laughing, and another minute to catch their breath.
“I can't believe I agreed to this.”
And yet, Screech could tell that she was going to be a good sport about it.
“You have to.”
“Fuck… okay, okay, but I'm making some modifications. I’m getting rid of this lace and some of the damn poofy shit.”
Screech shook his head and wiped tears from his eyes.
“That thing cost me five-hundred bucks. You can't cut it, because I have to take it back after the bawl.”
Hanna grinned.
“In that case, you can count on me spilling some red wine on it, teriyaki sauce, maybe.”
“Then it's coming out of your paycheck,” Screech said, still smiling.
“That's all right, I'll just cash in my full dental work coverage. I was thinking about getting all my teeth replaced by big metal fuckers like the guy from 007.”
Screech stopped laughing.
“Yeah, and I think I'll get braces,” Leroy chimed in.
“To hell, you will.”
After things calmed down, and they'd gotten the giggles out of their system, the trio got to work.
“So, basically, we just want to get in there, set up some cameras, get some eyes on Steffani Loomis, if you can. You’ll be wired for sound with an earpiece and I’ve got a bunch of button cameras that you can place around the estate if things go according to plan. There’s also this pendant that you’re gonna wear, which will also take video,” Screech informed Hanna. “I don't know what we’re going to catch on video, if anything, but we're going to try. The key here is that we just want to look. Be polite, nod, curtsy, whatever, but don’t engage these people more than you have to.”
Hanna nodded.
“Aye, aye Captain, look but no touchy, touchy—strip club rules, only.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“So, you're the tech guy and I'm the spy… does that make Leroy the ammunitions guy?” Hanna asked, looking over at the kid.
Leroy made a face.
“Why? Because I'm black?”
Hanna looked around dramatically.
“Because you're the only other person here, dumbass. And if we’re going to pose as some sort of retarded A-Team, we need an ammunitions guy. Okay, B.A. Baracus?”
“He's not an ammunitions guy,” Screech said, rolling his eyes. “You heard his mom, we can’t put him in any sort of dangerous situation. She’ll murder us. Besides, he's the only one not licensed to carry a gun here.”
“Speaking of which,” Hanna interrupted, “Lots of poof up in this dress, lots of places to hide some guns.”
Screech shook his head.
“No, no way. You’re not carrying any weapon in there. Strip club rules, remember?”
Hanna made a face but nodded.
“So, if I’m not the ammunitions guy, what the hell am I going to do?” Leroy asked.
“Oh, you’ve got a pretty important job,” Screech said, spinning his computer monitor around.
Leroy squinted at the image of an elderly black man.
“What the—who the hell is this?”
“That's you,” Screech said with a grin. “At least, that's who you're going to be after you borrow his security badge.”
Leroy balked.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me. I thought you were racist before when you suggested that I’m the weapons guy, but now you want me to be the Butler? And he’s eighty for Christ’s sake!”
Hanna couldn't help but chuckle.
“Hey, we’ve all got a role to play here,” she said. “I'm sure it'll be fun.”
“I wouldn’t laugh too hard, Hanna,” Screech said, glancing down at his watch. “Because I think it's about time you spoke to your fairy godmother and got into your prom dress, sweetheart.”
Part III - The Princess of the Ball
Chapter 38
Dr. Beckett Campbell, Senior Medical Examiner for the state of New York, walked with purpose down the hallway. He'd already confirmed that the body of Mr. Armand Armatridge was being housed in a cold room at the New York State Morgue. He'd read the file and had gone ahead and let the Medical Examiner who had signed off on the body—a Dr. Karen Nordmeyer—know that he was going to take another look.
And if her tone on the phone was any indication, culminated by the fact that she’d insisted on being present, Beckett figured that Dr. Nordmeyer was none too pleased about this development.
Pr
ofessional courtesy decreed that you didn't undermine or challenge a fellow colleague’s final report, unless it was court mandated, of course. Even then, you tried your best to split hairs and parse infinitives to make sure that everyone understood that any inherent differences were a matter of opinion and not medicine.
Yeah, right.
Beckett loathed these “unwritten” rules, but the idea of someone reviewing and challenging his own work… well, that simply wouldn’t be acceptable.
He was surprised to see Dr. Nordmeyer waiting for him in the cold room that housed Armand Armatridge’s body. She was a mousy woman, short, a little stocky, and with her arms crossed over her chest the way they were now, she looked like a little ball of hate.
“Dr. Nordmeyer,” Beckett said, feigning joviality. He went so far as to reach out to hug the woman—anything to make her even more uncomfortable—but she recoiled as if he were some sort of leper.
And, in the medical community, he supposed that he was. Minus the contagious part.
“I'd ask you again why you're looking into this case,” she said. “But I know you wouldn't tell me.”
Beckett grinned.
“The perks of being the boss, I guess.”
“More like the perks of being an asshole,” she whispered under her breath.
Beckett let this go; he'd been called worse, by Suzan no less, and the truth was, he was a bit of an asshole.
He shook his head.
No, that wasn’t right; he wasn’t a ‘bit of an asshole’ but a giant, wizard’s sleeve of an asshole.
But a snowflake, he was not.
Beckett hooked a chin at the body locker that Dr. Nordmeyer stood defiantly in front of.
“This is where our friend Armand is napping?”
Dr. Nordmeyer scowled and stepped aside.
It was as good as a, ‘yes sir, thank you, sir’.
Beckett pulled the door open, then reached for the handle on the tray inside. As he slid the body out, Dr. Nordmeyer spoke up again.
“Is there some reason why you’re doing this to me?”
With the tray halfway out, Beckett turned to the woman.
“To you? You millennials… everything is always about you, isn’t it? Why can’t it just be about getting it right?”
Dr. Nordmeyer’s lips twisted into a sinister smile that he didn’t care for.
“You really don’t remember this case, do you?”
This threw Beckett for a loop, and he hesitated, racking his brain to figure out if she was just making shit up.
“No, I guess I don’t,” he admitted at last.
Nordmeyer scoffed.
“I came to you asking for help on this one, for your opinion—no, wait, you came to me, offering your opinion. Dr. Campbell, you’re the one who said that Armand had been pushed up the stars.”
Beckett squinted at the woman. He felt the beginnings of another headache coming on, despite the three Tylenol he’d popped this morning.
They were getting worse and more frequent.
“Shoved up the stairs?”
None of this rang a bell. He thought that there was a hint of a memory of meeting this woman, this Dr. Karen Nordmeyer before, but that was around the time that he was dealing with the McEwing girl. The time when he was adding to his tattoo collection.
A strange tingling started in his fingertips then, almost as if it was a symptom of his burgeoning headache.
A tingling, an urge.
Beckett realized that Dr. Nordmeyer was speaking to him—her lips were moving—but he wasn’t hearing any words. For some strange reason, he was fixated on the inner corner of her right eye. He simply couldn’t look away from her tear duct. The tingling intensified, and he envisioned himself taking a pencil out of his pocket, pulling the woman’s head back, and jamming the sharpened tip into the tear duct.
A sudden flash of pain shot from temple to temple and he winced.
“Are you even listening to me?”
Beckett shook his head and his headache subsided.
“You were saying something about this stiff. Something about me signing off on him?” The phrase came out as more of a question than a statement, and the look of confusion that washed over Dr. Nordmeyer’s face confirmed that she'd long since moved on from this point.
“You came into this very room and told me that there were bruises on the man's back from where he was pushed. Remember? The man's wife claimed that she was outside at the time of his fall. He was in a wheelchair at the time. You really don’t remember this? It was less than a month ago.”
Beckett blinked twice and some of the memory started coming back to him. He recalled rolling the man’s body over and looking at bruises on his back.
“There are these strange gouges in his head, deep gouges, but no blunt force trauma.” As the doctor rambled on, Beckett slid the tray all the way out and then stared at the white sheet that covered Mr. Armatridge’s body. “You said that he probably fell up the stairs, but that he’d been shoved.”
Beckett slowly teased the sheet back and stared down at the man's pale face. He offered a cursory glance at the wounds in his head, and more of the memory of seeing him before came flooding back. There were seven gashes on his chrome dome, three of which were longer and deeper than the others. Reserving closer inspection of these wounds for later, he spent a few moments inspecting his legs. They weren’t the atrophy limbs of a man who couldn’t walk. Make no mistake, Mr. Armatridge was no quadzilla either, but it was clear that this man, while he might've been wheelchair-bound for most of the day, still had use of his legs.
Just like Mrs. Armatridge, if Screech was to be believed.
“If you change my final report, if you overrule what I wrote, the police are going to ask questions—the wife has already been charged. And if that happens, they’ll go to the board. Is that what you want?”
Once again, Beckett ignored her as he continued to scan the body. The bruising on his back was more obvious now that the body was nearly as white as the sheet that had covered it. And these marks really did look like hand prints. But how strong would you have to be to leave them, was the real question.
“Do you want this department to be scrutinized after all that—”
“I'm sorry,” Beckett said, raising his eyes and offering a placating smile. “Are you still speaking? I mean, your lips are moving, but no intelligible sounds are coming out.”
Dr. Nordmeyer glared at him.
“Why don’t you make yourself useful and go fetch me a photograph of the man's wheelchair, would you, please?”
Chapter 39
Leroy vaulted himself over the short wrought iron fence. As soon as his sneakers hit the grass, he took off running, trying his best to stay out of the bright lights that illuminated the yard. He made it across the lawn without being noticed, then pressed his back up against the brick wall. He paused to catch his breath and to try to slow his rapidly beating heart.
Mom said to get out, he thought with a touch of disdain. I guess this qualifies.
For the first time since starting at DSHL, Leroy considered that taking her advice about going to college might have been the smarter choice. Instead, he found himself here, in the process of breaking half a dozen laws and subjecting him to further scrutiny by the morally-inept New York elite.
Buck up, Leroy. These people were responsible for your brother’s death. There is no better way to honor him than to make sure they get what’s comin’.
Leroy craned his neck around the corner and immediately spotted a man with his back to him, wearing identical white shirt and black trousers. As he watched, a thick cloud of smoke nearly engulfed the man’s head.
One final deep breath and Leroy smoothed his shirt and stepped out into the open.
“Excuse me,” he said, as he made his way toward the man.
When he didn’t turn, Leroy raised his voice.
“Excuse me?”
The man turned, and his lined face suddenly went flaccid. Leroy w
atched as he slipped the hand holding the joint down to his hip before dropping it to the grass. Then he slid his heel over top of it to stamp it out.
None of these were half as subtle as the man thought they were.
“I was just, uh, I was...”
“Smoking a J,” Leroy finished for him. He took several steps forward, and then his own face that went slack. “Shit.”
In person, the man looked less like him than even in the photo that Screech had pulled up on the computer. Sure, they were both black, but Leroy was a tall and thin eighteen-year-old. This man must have been close to forty, with flecks of gray in his short beard and eyes that were slightly yellowed from years of alcohol abuse.
Fucking Screech, Leroy thought glumly. We all look the same to you, is that right?
“Who are you?” the man asked, his tone becoming defensive.
“I'm your replacement,” Leroy replied, mustering up as much courage as he could.
The man's eyes narrowed.
“Nuh-uh, I'm here all night. I'm doin’ the front door, the checklist.”
Leroy shook his head.
“You were doing the front door, but now you're going home for the night.”
The man's flaccid expression became a scowl and he puffed up his chest a little. He had a good twenty pounds on Leroy and while it was obvious that he’d put his body through the ringer over the years, Leroy wasn’t much of a fighter, himself.
And he had no intention of becoming one anytime soon.
“I don't think so.”
“Well, okay, let me just, uhh, make a call to your employer, let ‘em know that you got high before the charity ball. How ‘bout that?”
“It's your word against mine,” the man said, but it was clear by the way he leaned back slightly as he spoke that he needed this job, that he wasn’t going to risk losing it over a single joint.
Leroy reached slowly and deliberately into his pocket. The man across from him tensed, but then relaxed when he saw the envelope.
Leroy held it out to the man.
“What's this?”
“Just take it,” Leroy instructed, shaking it. As he did, the flap, which was intentionally unsealed, flipped up, revealing a wad of bills inside.
Drug Lord- Part II Page 11
