Cause of Death

by Patrick Logan

  “Where is she?” he bellowed.

  The man looked up at him with wide eyes and horror washed over Drake. He recognized this man, their killer: it was the same man who had helped him up when he had fallen outside Barney’s.

  What had he said?

  You should be careful out here, especially if you’ve been drinking… not everyone is as nice as I am.

  The felled man took advantage of Drake’s momentary confusion and shot a knee upward, into his groin.

  Drake grunted as searing pain shot up from the point of impact, and his body protectively curled into a modified fetal position. Through flashes of red and white, Drake saw the man struggling to scramble to his feet. With a guttural roar, he fought the pain in his crotch and at the last moment managed to unfurl himself.

  Drake’s hand shot out and latched onto the man’s ankle. Mustering all of his remaining strength, he pulled—pulled hard—and the man crashed back down. His hands went out to break his fall, but he was too slow and his chin bounced off the flagstones with a tremendous smack.

  Drake crawled on top of him, grabbing a handful of his brown hair.

  “Where is she?” he yelled again, feeling the heat from the burning house to his right beginning to scald his flesh.

  There was no answer; the man had been knocked out cold.

  Drake jumped to his feet and spun around, surprised to see Beckett standing behind him, a shocked expression on his face.

  “Grab him! Throw him in the trunk!” Drake yelled.

  Beckett, frozen in fear, just stood there.

  “Do it!”

  The second shout spurred Beckett to action and he strode forward, grabbing ahold of Craig Sloan’s ankles.

  “Where are you going?”

  Drake turned to the burning house.

  “Inside! I’m going inside! She could still be alive in there! Suzan could still be alive!”

  Without waiting for a response, Drake shielded his face from the blaze, and then pulled himself through the opening in the plywood that moments before the killer had crawled out of.

  Chapter 65

  Beckett watched his friend disappear into the flames. He wanted to stop him, to tell him that they were too late, that Suzan was gone, but he knew better than to waste his breath.

  Drake was going to find Suzan Cuthbert, or he would die trying.

  And it was all his fault. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t asked Suzan to be his TA, to help him look into the strange coincidences between recent suicides and the forensic pathology final exam.

  Tears streamed down his face, and Beckett ground his teeth. With a grunt, he dragged Craig’s limp body down the side of the house. The man was thin, but Beckett wasn’t used to this sort of physical exertion and within seconds, sweat mixed with the tears on his face.

  Everything that had happened was so surreal, so completely outside his reality.

  Puzzles… he liked puzzles, and most of the people he came across in his line of work were already dead. Heading to Montreal to inquire about a murder was one thing, but this… this was too much.

  Beckett eventually dragged Craig’s limp body to the front of the house. When he got to the Crown Vic, he reached inside and popped the trunk. Then he oriented Craig’s body close to the opening. With a deep breath, he leaned down and scooped up his body. He teetered and for a brief moment, he feared that he was going to topple. Grinding his teeth and driving his feet into the asphalt, he managed to right himself, and with a final thrust, he managed to drop the man’s body into the trunk.

  Craig’s body landed with a dull thud, and his eyes rolled back in his head. Beckett’s eyes locked on the man’s face, and it was suddenly the only thing that he could see.

  The fire in front of him was gone, and he was deaf to the sirens that had started to fill the night air.

  There was only him and their killer.

  “Wake up!” he screamed. “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

  He wanted—no, wanted wasn’t a strong enough word for what he felt. Beckett needed the man to atone for what he had done, for the lives he had destroyed, including his own.

  “Wake up!” he shrieked.

  Beckett was nearing hysteria now, and he might have lost it completely if it weren’t for the sound of splitting wood from inside the house.

  His eyes flicked up in time to see part of the roof collapse inward with an incredible shower of sparks.

  Beckett slammed the trunk closed, avoiding looking at Craig again for fear of what might happen, and then pulled out his cell phone.

  “Chase!” he yelled. “We need an ambulance and the fire department to Dr. Moorfield’s house in Lenox Hill now!”

  Chapter 66

  Drake found Dr. Tracey Moorfield on the stairs. The woman’s gray hair had been burnt away, and her face was white with blisters. Her clothes were still smoldering, and in spots where it had burnt away completely, Drake saw blackened patches of flesh beneath.

  “Where is she? Where’s Suzan?” he shouted, trying to make himself heard over the roar of the fire.

  The woman, who was crawling down the stairs, croaked, but seemed to have lost the ability to form words.

  Drake turned his attention to the upper level. It was clear by the intensity of the heat bearing down on him that this was where the fire had started.

  And also the most likely place to find Suzan.

  “Suzan!” he yelled. “Suzan, where are you!”

  The woman on the stairs croaked again, but this time Drake thought he heard a single word on her charred tongue.

  “Upstairs.”

  Drake hopped over Dr. Moorfield and took the stairs two at a time. With every step, the intensity of the heat increased, and he pulled the collar of his shirt up to his eyes to try and keep his flesh from burning, which also helped filter the acrid smoke that filled the air. And yet despite this measure, he could feel his mind start to swim, the lack of oxygen making him dizzy.

  On the landing, he instinctively turned to his left. It was so hot now that Drake could no longer run forward; in fact, he couldn’t even walk straight anymore. He was forced to turn sideways and lead with an outstretched hand, shuffling toward where he thought—where he hoped—Suzan might be.

  “Suzan!” he yelled again, but this time the word was completely swallowed by the fire.

  His eyes were watering, and he could feel the skin on his lead hand and forehead start to blister.

  And yet his forward progress never stopped.

  Drake found Suzan huddled in a ball toward the back of the house, in what he assumed had once been a bedroom.

  “No!” he screamed. Upon seeing her body, all self-defense mechanisms went out the window. Drake sprinted toward Suzan, barely avoiding the melted mess of a jerry can, and then bent down and scooped her up. The smoke was so thick toward the back of the house, that he couldn’t tell if she was injured, couldn’t even tell if she was breathing.

  It didn’t matter.

  Drake hoisted her thin body to his chest and then hurried back the way he had come.

  Dr. Moorfield had since made it to the bottom of the stairs, but that was as far as she had gotten. She had collapsed in a motionless heap, blisters on her bare back hissing and popping like a demented organic orchestra.

  Drake stepped over the corpse, and then his mind swirled and he almost went down. Gritting his teeth, he somehow managed to continue forward.

  The cool night air was like ice water against his singed skin. The difference in temperature was so great that his body immediately seized and he fell to his knees.

  Please don’t die on me, Suzan. Please don’t die on me. Please… Please… Please…

  The last thing Drake heard before darkness overcame him was the sound of gunshots filling the night air.

  Chapter 67

  Beckett intended to follow Drake into the house, but had only made it halfway—his progress had been slowed by several more collapsing sections of roof—when he heard the first g
unshot.

  He instinctively crouched, covering his head, turning toward the sound as he did.

  More gunshots erupted, and Beckett saw about half a dozen bullet holes blossom on the trunk of Drake’s Crown Vic.

  He should have run. Every fiber of his being was telling him to turn and run, seek shelter from Craig Sloan and the fire by cowering a safe distance across the street.

  But he didn’t; something forced him to hold his ground. It might have been guilt, it might have been a bastardized form of bravery, or it might have been something else entirely.

  Beckett didn’t know.

  But whatever it was, it drove him toward the car instead of away from it. Even when another shot rang out, this one shattering the lock on the hood, and a gloved hand tentatively gripped it from the inside, Beckett continued forward.

  His foot collided with something, and he glanced down.

  A baseball-sized stone wobbled across the driveway. Without thinking, Beckett bent to pick it up, then continued toward the car.

  When he looked up, Craig Sloan had managed to swing a leg out of the hood. He was looking in the other direction, and judging by the way his body swayed, it was clear that he was still feeling the effects of his chin cracking off the flagstones.

  He clutched a pistol in his right hand, the black barrel nearly completely lost in the background of his black outfit.

  Craig had only just managed to lift his body out of the trunk when Beckett came upon him.

  “You killed her!” Beckett hissed.

  Craig Sloan turned, a look of confusion on his face. Blood flowed from a thick gash on his chin, and when his lips parted in surprise at the sight of Beckett raising the stone, he revealed only shattered remnants of his top and bottom teeth.

  Craig tried to bring the gun up, but Beckett’s arm flew forward with remarkable speed.

  There was a sickening, wet smack as the rock struck Craig Sloan in the temple. The man’s eyes rolled back, and he staggered.

  “You killed her,” Beckett repeated, this time his voice barely a whisper.

  He swung the rock again, and this time Craig dropped the gun.

  “You killed her.”

  His hand shot forward a third time, sending a now unconscious Craig sprawling.

  The rock came back soaked with blood, but this didn’t stop him.

  Nothing could stop Beckett now.

  Chapter 68

  Detective Chase Adams wasn’t the first person on the scene, but when she arrived the entire street was gripped by pandemonium.

  There were three fire trucks trying to put out the inferno, one of which had collided with an ambulance, causing the siren, which was still blaring, to fill the night sky with a high-pitched whine.

  Chase leaped from her car and weaved her way through the four or five police cruisers already on scene.

  A uniformed officer moved to stop her, but he must have realized who she was as he stepped out of her way before she shoved by him.

  “Drake!” she hollered. “Drake!”

  Her eyes skipped along all of the figures by the side of the road, trying to find an outline that matched Drake’s.

  A hand suddenly came down on her shoulder, and she whipped around, subconsciously balling her own hands into fists.

  Detective Yasiv’s young face stared back at her.

  “He’s fine,” Yasiv said. “And Suzan’s fine, too. She has some burns, pretty bad in some places, and she’ll have to be on oxygen for a while, but she’s going to pull through.”

  Chase felt her entire body start to tremble.

  “Wh—wh—what? Are you sure?”

  Yasiv nodded.

  “They’re going to be fine, Chase. Drake got here just in time.”

  Chase felt her eyes begin to water, and knew that she was within seconds of her emotions overwhelming her. She pulled away from Detective Yasiv and started to backpedal.

  “Chase? You okay?” he asked, the relief on his face morphing into concern.

  Chase shook her head, and then turned and started to run—to run away from Detective Yasiv, Drake, Suzan, to run from everything.

  Through tear-streaked vision, she sprinted toward a quiet alley between two abandoned houses far enough away to offer some relief from the heat of the fire, but still close enough to hear the damn wounded ambulance siren.

  With one furtive glance over her shoulder to make sure she was alone, Chase melted. She collapsed to her knees and buried her hands in her face. The sobs came fast and furious.

  They’re alive! Somehow… they’re alive!

  They weren’t tears of joy, not quite, but they weren’t a result of sorrow or anguish, either.

  They were from being overwhelmed, from being so close to losing everything.

  A scraping sound caused her to pull her face from her hands.

  “Who’s there?” she hissed.

  There was a flicker of movement in the shadows and Chase instinctively reached behind her and withdrew her gun.

  Holding the pistol out in front of her, she rose to her feet and repeated the query.

  “Who’s there? Who the fuck is there?”

  A man stepped from the shadows, and Chase’s breath caught in her throat. She immediately lowered her gun.

  “Beckett?” She squinted hard in the moonlight. It was indeed Beckett, but his face looked older somehow. Her eyes fell on his arms next, which were held out to his sides, and she immediately rushed toward him. “What the hell happened?”

  Her first thought was that Beckett’s sleeves had caught fire and that he had found water in this alley to soak them in, to extinguish the flames. But as she neared, she realized that it wasn’t water that had darkened his jacket.

  It was blood, and it coated him nearly to the elbows.

  “He—he tried to get away,” Beckett said in a faraway voice.

  A large stone fell from his hand and clattered to the ground.

  “What? Who?” Chase gasped.

  Beckett swooned, and she grabbed him just before he went down.

  “Who, Beckett? Who tried to get away?”

  But then she saw ‘who’. Lying on the ground just ten paces behind Beckett was the body of a man dressed in black. Only it wasn’t a complete silhouette. From the neck up, everything went flat, degenerating into a glistening pool of blood that painted the gravel walk.

  “He had a gun and—”

  Chase pulled away from Beckett. Then she reached up and grabbed the man’s face with both hands. At first, his eyes didn’t focus, and she dug her nails into his skin until his gaze fixed on hers.

  “Listen to me, Beckett. Did he have a gun?”

  Beckett nodded, and Chase kept her grip firm.

  “Where is it?”

  “I—I don’t know, it was in the trunk, and then…” he shrugged. “I don’t know what happened to it.”

  Chase frowned and she squeezed his cheeks even harder.

  “Think, Beckett. Think!”

  Beckett’s eyelids fluttered, and this time Chase slapped him across the face.

  “Think!”

  Lucidity returned to Beckett’s eyes.

  “He dropped it,” he said at last. “He dropped it by the car.”

  Chase ground her teeth.

  “Alright, listen to me, Beckett. Here’s what we’re going to do…”

  Chapter 69

  Chase stood over the hospital bed, peering down at Drake as he slept. His head was covered in bandages, and he had gauze pads glued to both of his cheeks.

  All in all, though, he didn’t look that bad. In fact, she had seen him look worse. According to the medic who had treated him at the scene, and the doctor Chase had spoken to just moments ago, all of his wounds were superficial. He’d have some sore hands due to the burns, and his face was going to get redder before it returned to its normal color, but nothing was permanent.

  All Drake needed was rest and oxygen, and he would be back on his feet in no time.

  “Is she… is she
alive?”

  Drake’s words, muffled by the oxygen mask that covered his nose and mouth, startled her. He pulled the mask off, wincing at the pain in his hands.

  “Is she alive?” He asked again.

  Chase looked down at him, tears starting to form in her eyes.

  “Suzan’s going to be fine, Drake. You got to her just in time.”

  Drake’s face seemed to collapse in on itself and he started to weep.

  “Dr. Moorfield didn’t cut her throat,” Chase continued. “She cut her here, on the scalp,” she ran a finger behind her ear and then moved downward. “Lots of blood, but no real damage.”

  Chase debated telling her ex-partner what had happened to Beckett, but decided against it. A man in his position could only handle so much at one time.

  Drake wiped the tears from his face with his bandaged hands and then started to sit up.

  “Woah, woah! You can’t get up, Drake.”

  “I need to see her,” he said gruffly.

  Chase shook her head.

  “You can’t. She’s in a protected oxygen room to help clear her lungs and deal with her burns. But she’s going to be fine.”

  Drake swung his legs over the side of the bed and then paused.

  “What about Dr. Moorfield?”

  Chase’s heart sunk as she remembered the scene outside the burning house, the paramedics working hard on Tracey Moorfield’s blackened body.

  She shook her head.

  “Dr. Moorfield didn’t make it. She died from asphyxiation.”

  Drake frowned.

  “And Craig Sloan? Is he in custody.”

  Chase’s frown deepened. Drake was too smart, too intuitive, to be left in the dark about anything, it seemed. And yet she felt a nagging urge to spare the man the details of the scene she had witnessed between the two abandoned houses.

  He—he tried to get away… he had a gun.

  “He isn’t in custody, is he?”