Cause of Death

by Patrick Logan

  Chase’s reply was immediate.

  “Over five hundred.”

  Beckett gaped.

  “Five hundred? That has to be over a few years.”

  Chase shook her head.

  “Last year alone. Closer to six hundred, actually.”

  Silence fell over them. Beckett’s mind was struggling to wrap itself around the idea that over five hundred people committed suicide last year in New York City. He could personally remember a dozen or so that he had overseen, and while he knew that the ME wasn’t called in for all cases of obvious suicide, he couldn’t fathom the number being so high.

  Suzan cleared her throat.

  “Let’s just focus on these ones for now,” she said softly. Clearly, she hadn’t expected the number to be that high, either. “So why can’t we set up a task force?”

  “Sergeant Rhodes… it’s close to election time. He won’t go on a wild goose chase, work NYC into a frenzy with another serial killer less than six months removed from the last one. I can’t bring this to him, not like this. He won’t go for this, no way, no how. Not without any evidence.”

  Beckett frowned. Although his interactions with Sergeant Rhodes had been limited, he had heard enough from Drake to know what an asshole he was.

  “Like I said, I’ll recheck all the bodies to see if I can find any evidence of foul play. But I’ll tell you now, it’s going to be tough. Two of the bodies have already been cleared.”

  His response, as rational as it was, seemed to enrage Suzan. This was just a little too close to home for her after what had happened to her father at the hands of the Skeleton King.

  “So, what? We just wait for this guy to strike again? Really? That’s the plan? Are we going to wait for the babies to die before we actually do something about it?”

  Chase’s eyes went wide and she turned to Beckett.

  “Babies? What does she mean, babies?”

  Beckett rubbed the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as he did.

  “There are eight images on the test, Chase, but—”

  Beckett was interrupted by Chase’s phone ringing. He opened his eyes as she turned her back to them and answered.

  “Adams,” she said, then listened. As Beckett watched, her shoulders started to sag. By the time she sounded off, her entire body seemed to melt.

  She turned slowly, her eyes downcast. When she spoke, her words were barely a whisper.

  “Looks like we won’t have to wait long,” she said, and then raised her eyes to look at the fifth photograph. “There’s been another suicide.”

  Chapter 27

  Drake stumbled out of Barney’s just as the sun started to dip below the horizon. His stomach was so full of whiskey that he could literally hear it sloshing in his belly with every step, and it seemed to set him off balance. As a result, he stumbled into one of the bouncers on the way out.

  “Sorry,” he grumbled, which came out more in a series of s’s instead of an actual word.

  Despite what Mickey had said, Alyssa had never showed, which had put him somewhat of a sour mood. Not completely sour, mind you; he still had a desk full of ten thousand dollar checks, a suddenly booming PI business, and a woman… somewhere.

  Drake mumbled to himself as he sauntered onto the sidewalk. The line-up outside Barney’s was starting to grow, he noticed, but this was mostly just for show. He’d been inside and it had been practically empty. Tweedle-dee and his partner -dum were just keeping people outside to make the bar look like it was more popular than it actually was.

  Not a bad strategy, he surmised.

  He blinked slowly and then continued down the sidewalk. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a police car cruise by. It slowed, and Drake craned his neck to look at it.

  Even through blurred vision, he thought he recognized the officer in the passenger seat. They locked eyes for a moment, and both Drake and the car came to a full stop.

  The smirk sloughed off Drake’s face.

  “What?” he snapped. “What do you want?”

  The officer, whose name escaped Drake, but whose face did not, frowned, then he rolled down the window.

  Drake strode forward, unconsciously balling his fists.

  “What?” he said again, louder this time.

  The police officer hawked, then spat a loogie on the ground just beside Drake’s shoe. Drake charged toward the car, raising his fists in front of him. But before he made it to the car, the officer rolled up the window and sped off. Drake reached for the bumper, but his depth perception and balance were off and his heel slipped on the curb.

  Drunk and disoriented, he went down hard on his ass. He grunted, but instead of trying to get up, he simply lay on his back and stared up at the darkening sky.

  And then he started to laugh.

  It was only a chuckle at first, but it soon degenerated into a belly rumbling guffaw. A few seconds after that, he realized that he was crying.

  Not sobbing, exactly, but crying hard enough for tears to stream down his cheeks.

  A shadowy figure suddenly loomed over him, and he blinked the tears away. With the fading sun behind him, Drake couldn’t make out his face, but he saw that the man was holding a hand out to him.

  “You okay, mister?”

  Drake laughed again and somehow managed to articulate that he was fine.

  “Let me help you up, then,” the man said in a gentle voice. Drake shrugged and grabbed his hand. The man was thin, but his grip was strong, and when he yanked, Drake was hoisted to his feet.

  He then proceeded to dust himself off.

  “Thanks,” he said, trying his best not to slur.

  “No problem,” the man responded. “You should be careful out here, especially if you’ve been drinking. Not everyone is as nice as I am.”

  Drake squinted, trying to make out the man’s face. He saw a narrow nose, deep-set eyes, and the beginnings of a beard. But try as he might, he was just too drunk to get a good overall idea of him.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, but the man was already gone.

  ***

  Drake somehow made it all the way to his couch without falling again. This took every ounce of his strength, and when he saw the worn leather, he collapsed into it, breathing long and deep.

  He lay there for a long while, each successive blink lasting longer than the previous.

  Sleep threatened to overtake him, and he was prepared to welcome it. But just as he felt his neck droop, the phone in his pocket buzzed. Normally he wouldn’t answer it, but thoughts of Alyssa forced his hand.

  And drunk as he was, he wasn’t too drunk to see her again.

  Only after he managed to remove the phone from his pocket, dropping it twice in the process, he realized that he hadn’t even given the woman his number.

  It wasn’t her; it was another message from Beckett. This time, however, he didn’t even bother to read it.

  “Leave me alone,” he grumbled as he deleted the message.

  He was about to lean back again and allow sleep to come, when he spied the icon that looked like a miniature video camera on his home screen. Drake pressed it with his thumb.

  A window popped open, but instead of the one bisected screen, he saw five extra icons.

  Screech must have set up the cameras in the other homes already, he thought with a hint of pride.

  Screech was a good man. Strange, odd-looking, and he had a brutally annoying laugh, but he was a good man.

  Drake was lucky to have found him.

  He wasn’t interested in the other icons, just the first. He clicked it and then stared at the upper right hand corner of the screen.

  Mrs. Armatridge was in bed, her husband lying beside her. They had their backs to each other, and as far as he could tell beneath their thick, quilted bedspread, they didn’t appear to be touching.

  And yet they had something that Drake wanted very much.

  Can I be like that one day? Can I fall in love with someone and live to be old, to be happy?
/>   They weren’t touching, but they appeared peaceful.

  The phone slipped from Drake’s hand and his head slumped back against the couch.

  He fell asleep.

  A sweet, dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 28

  Chase showed up her badge to the nearest officer.

  “Detective Adams,” she said, then gestured to the man behind her. “And this is Dr. Campbell.”

  The officer nodded and stepped aside. Chase and Beckett strode forward, and the uniform fell into step beside them.

  “The victim is a male in his early twenties. Appears to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the cheek; there’s a massive exit wound on the top of his skull. His given name is Gerald Leblanc, but he occasionally went by Geraldine.”

  Chase raised an eyebrow and the police officer, sensing her confusion, continued.

  “Street worker. I knew the man, picked him up a few times. Nice kid, confused, sure, but nice kid. I just never thought…” he let his sentence trail off.

  Halfway down the alleyway now, Chase stopped and turned to face the officer.

  “You going to be alright Officer…”

  “Dwight.”

  “You going to be alright Officer Dwight?”

  The man made a face.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  With a nod, they continued forward again at a brisk clip, making their way toward a dumpster that was cordoned off by police tape.

  Officer Dwight cleared his throat.

  “A couple passersby heard the shot and called it in. Nobody came down the alley—and no one saw anyone exit—until the first officer was on scene.”

  A sudden series of dull thuds suddenly filled the air, and Chase turned her gaze skyward.

  “Was that thunder?”

  “No, ma’am,” replied Officer Dwight. “There’s a bar up the street… supper club type of thing. Barney’s, I think. Music pounds from four in the afternoon ‘till four in the morning.”

  Chase checked her watch. It was six pm.

  “Well it’s annoying as hell,” she replied, moving closer to the dumpster.

  Beckett grunted his agreement.

  She cleared the edge of the dumpster and despite being prepared for what was to come, the scene still took her by surprise.

  It wasn’t the gore, that much she had become accustomed to. It was the uncanny resemblance to the photograph that had lain on Beckett’s desk.

  Gerald was on his back, arms laying at his sides. In fact, from the chin down, she might have thought him sleeping. His chest was bare, and his skin was puckered from the cold, and he was wearing a pair of dark jeans.

  Even the lower part of his face looked normal, complete with reddish stubble. But when she raised her gaze just a little higher, things went from ordinary to grotesque.

  There was a dime-sized hole on his left cheek, rimmed with dried blood. From there, things got progressively worse. The man’s eyes were rolled back, revealing mostly whites. The top of his head was completely obliterated: it was a ragged mess of flesh and blood that spread out across the pavement like a bowl of spilled fettuccine. Brain matter clung to the side of the dumpster like oatmeal.

  “That the weapon?” Chase asked, kneeling beside an old-fashioned rifle. It was lying with the barrel pointed away from the body next to his right arm.

  “Looks like it,” Officer Dwight replied.

  “I was asking Beckett,” Chase said sharply.

  Beckett picked up the gun with a gloved hand and inspected the barrel. After several moments, he replaced it in the same position, then went to inspect Gerald’s face. He probed the skin around the bullet hole, then used his pinky to determine the size of the entrance wound.

  “It’s consistent. Won’t be able to tell for sure until we get it to the lab.” He removed what looked like a wet-nap from his pocket, opened it, then ran it across the index finger and thumb of Gerald’s pale hand.

  Beckett waited for five seconds, then held the paper up for Chase to see.

  It was covered in gray smudges.

  “GSR on his hands.”

  Chase nodded as Beckett stood and started to root through his black medical bag. As he rummaged, she observed the scene in more detail, trying to find something—anything—that would suggest foul play.

  Her breath made frosty puffs in the air, and she shivered.

  The temperature was dropping.

  “Why isn’t he wearing a shirt?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  Chase turned to look at Officer Dwight.

  “Why isn’t he wearing a shirt? It’s getting cold out here.”

  Dwight shrugged.

  “I don’t, I guess—”

  Chase interrupted him.

  “Look in the dumpster.”

  “Ah, pardon?”

  Chase sighed.

  “Take a look in the dumpster, see if you can find his shirt.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he said, then immediately moved to the dumpster and threw the top back. It clanged loudly and Chase cringed.

  “Hey Chase?” Beckett said.

  “What is it?”

  “Check this out,” he replied, holding a manila folder open to him. She only needed to glance at the photograph to realize that the similarities were uncanny: the bullet hole in Gerald’s left cheek, the obliterated top of his head. The bare chest, the dark jeans.

  She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples.

  “Found something!”

  Chase opened her eyes and looked over at Officer Dwight. He was using some sort of stick that he had found in the dumpster to hold up a sequined muscle shirt.

  “This is his. I picked him up wearing this very shirt a couple of months back.”

  Chase felt a headache coming on, and she ground her teeth against it.

  “Want me to bag it?” Dwight asked. And then, before she could answer, he turned to Beckett, “Can we wrap this up here? Mark it up as a suicide?”

  Chase took an aggressive step forward.

  “Suicide? Suicide? Who takes off their shirt before committing suicide? Does that make sense to you? What, Gerald didn’t want to get his clothes dirty before he died?”

  Dwight looked scared.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Maybe he was worried about the dry-cleaning bill. Shit, they might charge extra for cleaning blood and brain matter from sequins.” She leaned into the man, feeling her emotions start to bubble over. “Is that what he was doing, Dwight?”

  The officer averted his eyes.

  “I just thought—”

  “You thought? You thought, what? That he—”

  Beckett’s hand came down on her shoulder, and she paused to look over at him. His lips were pressed together tightly.

  Chase shook her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Officer Dwight. “But this is no suicide. I want CSU in here; I want them to comb the whole goddamn alley. As far as the damn bar that keeps playing that obnoxious music, even. This, Officer Dwight, isn’t a suicide; it’s a homicide.”

  Chapter 29

  When Drake first opened his eyes, he wasn’t completely sure where he was. He blinked rapidly, trying to break the gumminess that held his lids together, and when that failed, he rubbed them with his fingers.

  I’m on the couch, he realized. He tried to rise, but his head started to ache and he sat back down.

  “Shit,” he grumbled. He clucked his tongue, and his stomach lurched.

  Somehow, he made it to the kitchen, where he chased two Advil with a glass of warm water. As he waited for the medicine to take effect, he had a cool shower and got dressed.

  “What the hell happened last night?” he asked himself. He remembered going to the bar, to Barney’s, but he didn’t remember coming home.

  He had no idea why his ass was sore, either, which was something of a concern for him. Just thinking of how that might have happened made him cringe.

  By the time he was finally d
ressed and ready, it was nearing ten o’clock. He scooped his phone off the table, and saw that the red light was once again blinking. It seemed like every time he picked the damn thing up he had messages waiting. Drake was beginning to think that letting Screech convince him that he needed a smartphone, when he was technologically dumb, wasn’t the best idea.

  So long as it’s not Beckett again.

  It wasn’t.

  It was a message from Screech, and Drake read it out loud.

  Drake where you at? It’s nine-thirty and Mrs. Armatridge has been waiting for nearly an hour and I’m running out of prune juice to offer!

  He shook his head, chuckled, and then hurried outside to his rusty Crown Vic.

  ***

  Screech’s voice reached him even though the door to Triple D was firmly closed.

  “I’m sure Drake will be here any minute, Mrs. Armatridge. He’s probably… he’s probably doing some police work. You know he used to be a police officer—a detective, don’t you?”

  Drake put his hand on the doorknob but didn’t immediately open the door. Instead, he listened.

  “Yes, I know he was a detective. But not anymore. He works for me now. And you’ve been telling me the same thing for the past hour.”

  “Can I get you anything while you wait? A pastille maybe?”

  He heard the elderly woman scoff.

  “Pastille? That would do wonders for my IBS. How about a glass of water? Filtered, of course. Perrier would be even better.”

  Drake took a deep breath and put on his best smile. Then he opened the door.

  Mrs. Armatridge was sitting in one of the burgundy chairs, Screech’s crane-like body hovering over her. The other chairs were occupied by more geriatrics.

  “Mrs. Armatridge,” Drake exclaimed loudly. “I’m so sorry I’m late. Had to help out with the NYPD.”

  The woman pursed her lips.

  “No need to shout. I’m not deaf.”

  The woman sitting beside Mrs. Armatridge looked over at her and said, “Pardon me?”