Cause of Death

by Patrick Logan

Chase shook her head.

  “No. He’s not.”

  Drake suddenly became agitated and he rocketed to his feet. The tubing extending from the IV embedded in the back of his right hand snagged, and he wobbled. She went to him, but he shrugged her off and yanked the line from his hand.

  “Drake, Craig’s dead. There was an… altercation and he was killed.”

  Drake got a far-off look in his eyes.

  “I heard the shots,” he said quietly, followed by a subtle nod. “And Beckett? Is Beckett okay?”

  “He’s fine. Shaken up, for sure, but he’ll pull through. You’d know better than I, but Beckett doesn’t strike me as the type of man to be kept down for long.”

  Drake seemed to relax, and he took a deep breath. This reprieve only lasted a few seconds, however. His eyes darted about the room.

  “My clothes? Where are my clothes?”

  “I really think you should lie back down, Drake. You’ve been through hell.”

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t know the half of it. But there is still something I have to do. Do you know where my clothes are?”

  “They were burnt; they’ve been tossed.”

  Drake swore under his breath, his eyes turning to the oversized scrubs that the nurse had helped him into after he had been admitted.

  “But I brought you something clean to wear,” Chase admitted with a sigh, knowing that she wasn’t going to be able to convince him to stay put. She reached into the large bag on the chair behind her and handed it to Drake.

  He looked inside and then smiled at her.

  “Ol’ trusty, huh?”

  She shrugged.

  “I figured you’d want to be comfortable.”

  Drake pulled out a white shirt, followed by a pair of pants. Last to come out of the bag was his worn sport coat.

  “You sure I can’t convince you to stay and rest?” Chase said as a last-ditch effort.

  Drake looked at her then, an incredible sadness in his eyes. It was only then that she realized just how damaged he was, how deeply Clay’s death had affected him.

  Tears began to form in her eyes again.

  Even though Drake was the one who had saved Suzan, and without him, she would have almost certainly become the suicide killer’s seventh victim, a part of Chase regretted showing up at Triple D that day.

  Drake, misinterpreting her expression, suddenly embraced her. Chase’s eyes went wide with surprise, and she hesitated before hugging him back.

  “Thank you,” he whispered softly in her ear.

  And then, without another word, Drake was gone, leaving Chase alone in the hospital room with only her thoughts.

  Chapter 70

  Beckett awoke with a start.

  He blinked hard, trying to clear his vision, while at the same time trying to figure out where the hell he was.

  He remembered the sound of gunshots, the crackle of a fire.

  Was it fireworks? Was I at some sort of festival?

  But then an image of a trunk peppered with bullet holes, of a man’s leg sticking out of it, came to him, and with that everything else flooded back.

  Beckett sat bolt upright and looked around, tightness gripping his narrow chest. He was in a room of sorts, a small, square room with beige walls that reminded him of a hospital room. There was a cream-colored sheet pulled up to his chin, and he flipped it off. He moved to rise, when the sound of metal on metal drew his attention to his wrist.

  He was handcuffed to the metal gurney.

  “Stay calm, Beckett,” a voice said softly from his right. Beckett’s eyes flicked in that direction, and he squinted hard.

  “Screech? That you? What am I doing here? Am I under arrest?”

  Screech stepped forward.

  “Quiet, we have to be quick,” the man said, holding a piece of paper out to him. Beckett took it with his free hand.

  “Have to be quick? Why? What’s going on?”

  Screech’s frown deepened.

  “Just read the damn thing and memorize it. Chase says all you have to do is recite it to them when they come to interview you.”

  Them?

  His mind was suddenly flooded with flashes of images, like a poorly edited film. A stone being pulled back, then driving forward before being retracted again. With each successive blow, it came back redder and wetter.

  Beckett shook his head, and scanned the short paragraph on the page he held in a trembling hand. When he was done, he handed it back to Screech.

  “That’s it?”

  Screech nodded.

  “That’s it. Did you memorize it?”

  Beckett said that he had.

  “Good,” Screech replied, shoving the paper into his jean pocket. Then he waved a hand dramatically in front of his face. “Alright, I’m going to David Blaine on your ass now—I was never here. Poof!”

  Then Screech turned to leave, but at the last moment, he lowered a hand on Beckett’s shoulder.

  “I’d have done the same thing, Beckett. Just stick to the script and we’ll be having a drink together soon, okay?”

  The man offered a weak smile, and Beckett did his best to return it.

  With that, Screech made his way to the door. He knocked once, and Officer Dunbar’s face suddenly appeared in the rectangular window. A second later, the door opened and Screech vanished.

  Chapter 71

  The air was chilly, and Drake got the impression that it wouldn’t be long before the first snowfall descended on New York like a frigid plague.

  He sat in his Crown Vic, the windows open, enjoying the cool air on his burned skin. His eyes trained on the apartment building, he waited.

  After about an hour, the door opened and Steff Morgan stepped out. She had a backpack slung over one shoulder and she walked briskly, with purpose. Pulling her coat up to her ears, she looked both ways before hurrying down the sidewalk.

  Only when she was out of sight did Drake get out of his car. Like Steff, his stride was determined, but unlike her, he headed toward the apartment and not away from it.

  After briefly glancing around to make sure that the street was quiet, he raised his gauzed hand to knock on the door. At the last second, he decided against it and instead kicked it with his boot.

  He heard stirring from inside the building, but when the footsteps didn’t sound as if they were any nearer to the door, he kicked again.

  And again.

  “I’m coming. Hold your horses,” a muffled male voice replied.

  Drake stopped kicking and waited. He heard the deadbolt turn and then locked his eyes on the door handle. When it started to turn, he shoved the door open.

  The man standing behind the door cried out and stumbled backward. Drake was on him before he managed to raise his hands defensively.

  He grabbed the man by the throat and threw him up against the wall. As he tightened his grip, he felt blisters pop beneath the bandages, but paid this no heed.

  “If you hit her again, I will kill you,” he said simply.

  Jake was making a strange hissing sound with his mouth, and spit speckled Drake’s face.

  He relaxed his grip and when Jake fell away from the wall, his mouth opened in an attempt to speak.

  Drake threw Jake against the wall again, the back of his head smacking against the drywall hard enough to leave a dent.

  “If you hit her again, I’ll kill you,” he repeated.

  This time, Jake didn’t say anything.

  Drake let go of the man’s throat and he collapsed to the ground, wheezing. Then he left the apartment and didn’t look back.

  ***

  “Jesus Christ, Drake—what the hell happened to you?” Mickey asked from behind the bar.

  Drake didn’t answer as he made his way toward the man. He gestured with a bandaged hand and the bartender quickly poured him a glass of whiskey.

  “It’s been a long day, Mickey. A long, long day.”

  Mickey didn’t bother trying to hide his discomfort at Dra
ke’s appearance.

  “No kidding. It looks like you fought a fireplace and lost—badly.”

  Drake sipped his drink.

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, shit, the drink’s on the house.”

  Drake took another gulp of the golden liquid, wincing at how the alcohol stung his raw throat.

  “Thanks,” he grumbled.

  After drinking in silence for several minutes, Drake realized that he was unable to let his mind roam free, to block out the events of the past week.

  For once, even the alcohol didn’t seem to be helping.

  There was, however, something that he thought might be able to take his mind off things, if only for a short while.

  “Hey, Mickey?”

  The bartender turned to face him.

  “What’s up? Need a refill?”

  Drake looked down at his glass.

  “Yes, but I need something else, too. Have you heard from Alyssa, lately?”

  Mickey smirked.

  “Naw, she rarely comes in here. Not her usual clientele, if you know what I mean.”

  Drake frowned.

  “Clientele?”

  “Yeah, she usually works the more upscale joints in Manhattan. In fact, I haven’t seen her since the night she left with you.”

  Drake couldn’t believe his ears.

  “Wh—what? What do you mean clientele?”

  The smile fell off Mickey’s face and he left the customers at the end of the bar and came over to him.

  Leaning in close, he said, “You know, rich kids.”

  “No, I don’t know. What the hell are you talking about?”

  Mickey stared him directly in the face for several seconds before speaking.

  “Shit, I’m sorry, Drake. I thought you knew. Alyssa’s a call girl.”

  Drake felt his body deflate.

  A call girl? I slept with a prostitute?

  Drake looked down and sighed.

  “It’s alright,” he said as he finished his whiskey.

  It made sense, what with her coming home with him and staying the night, then sneaking out before he was awake, not bothering to leave her number.

  He had had his suspicions, of course. But if Alyssa was a call girl, why hadn’t she asked for any payment?

  But Drake realized that he knew the answer to that as well.

  Alyssa hadn’t asked for money, because she had already been paid. And there was only one person he knew who would throw that kind of money around to get what he wanted.

  And in this case, what he wanted was Drake.

  “Sorry, Drake,” Mickey said again, before sliding down the bar to deal with a couple who had just taken a seat at the neon bar.

  Drake pulled out his cell phone and intended to click on his contacts, but the booze and exhaustion took its toll and he missed his mark.

  Instead, he clicked on the app that looked like a video camera.

  “Fuck,” he said, meaning to back out to the home screen. But when the video loaded, he saw something that caught his eye.

  It was the familiar view of Mrs. Armatridge’s house divided into four quadrants.

  In the upper right-hand corner was the Armatridge’s bed, the covers were pulled up high. Only it wasn’t freshly made. There was movement from beneath the sheets. A lot of movement.

  A tanned arm slipped out of the sheets and then proceeded to pull them up higher.

  “What the hell?” he whispered.

  A flurry of activity drew his attention to the lower left-hand corner: the kitchen. Mrs. Armatridge was at the knife block again, and as he watched, she pulled a large blade from the wood.

  She looked at it for a second, nodded, then started toward the stairs.

  “What the hell?” he repeated, more loudly this time.

  When Mrs. Armatridge made it to the stairs, Drake realized what was happening, what the woman was intending to do.

  “What the hell!”

  He flicked to the home screen, then went scrolled to his contacts. Only instead of calling Ken Smith as he had first intended, he dialed Screech instead.

  “Screech! You need to—”

  “Drake, that you? Are you okay? I meant to—”

  “Screech, just listen. You need to head to Mrs. Armatridge’s place right now!”

  “What? What the hell are you talking—”

  “Just shut the fuck up for once, and just go, Screech! Get off your ass and go!”

  Drake hung up the phone, still in shock at what he had seen.

  For some reason, his mind turned to what Mrs. Armatridge had said the first time they had met, which had oddly mimicked what Dr. Mark Kruk had said long ago.

  People see what they want to see. They don’t really see what’s there. An imago.

  Epilogue

  “In here,” Chase said to the two men in the freshly pressed suits. The men didn’t bother knocking on the office door. They simply turned the knob and entered.

  Chase smiled.

  “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” Rhodes shouted, jumping to his feet.

  Chase stepped into the office behind the two men.

  “Check his desk; the photographs are in the top drawer.”

  The taller of the two men nodded at her and then walked around to Rhodes’s side of the desk.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Rhodes repeated, his face turning a deep shade of crimson.

  “Officers Lincoln and Herd, Internal Affairs,” the shorter man said, his face stern.

  Rhodes blinked once, his Adam’s apple bobbed, and he started toward the door.

  The man who had executed the perfunctory introduction pointed a short finger at Rhodes’s chest.

  “Stay where you are, Sergeant Rhodes.”

  Rhodes looked like he was going to explode. He stared daggers at Chase.

  “Did you bring these guys in? You brought IA in?” he demanded, his voice nearing a hysterical pitch.

  Chase shrugged and said nothing.

  Officer Lincoln pulled a manila folder from the top drawer of his desk and placed it on top. He opened it, and then held up the first photograph for Chase to see.

  “This it?”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  Lincoln tucked the folder into his briefcase.

  “What’s the meaning of this?”

  “Oh, I think you know, Rhodes. I brought this to your attention twice and you ignored it. Now we have a prestigious professor burned alive, and the daughter of a murdered policeman in the hospital. So maybe, just maybe, you should have listened to me,” Chase said, not bothering to hide the smugness that crept into her voice.

  “What? What? Who?”

  “Dr. Moorfield had some important friends, Rhodes. And when they heard what happened to her, they were curious as to why nothing was being done about the serial killer that took her life.”

  Rhodes gawked.

  “Serial killer?”

  Chase was done with this conversation. She turned to Lincoln.

  “That should be enough.”

  The man nodded.

  “Sergeant Rhodes, you are officially suspended pending an investigation into your lack of action in this case.”

  Now Rhodes really looked like he was about to erupt. But his eyes glanced nervously at Lincoln and then Herd, and in the end, he decided better than shouting.

  Instead, he bowed his head, and slowly, methodically, walked by Chase and left the office without another word.

  “Hey Rhodes,” Chase hollered after him. “You said you wouldn’t be Sergeant for long, but I bet this wasn’t what you had in mind, was it?”

  END

  Author’s note

  I’ve spent the past 13 years studying pathology, and yet I’m not afraid to admit that there is still so much I don’t know. Which is why I couldn’t write this book without help. So what did I do? Well, I did what any sane, rational person would: I sent an innocuous email to an old path
ologist colleague of mine. It went a little like this: ‘Hi Sara, hope you and yours are doing well. Just wondering, if I wanted to kill someone and make it look like a suicide or accident, how might I go about it?’

  Thank you, Sara, for not immediately calling the police. And thank you for all of your help with Cause of Death. I couldn’t have finished it without you.

  Also, for the record, you apparently can’t electrocute someone with a car battery. The method I described in the book, however, is highly plausible. But, truth be told, I haven’t tested it and don’t intend to anytime soon. I know, I know, the movies lied to us. You also can’t ignite gasoline with a cigarette. Another lie.

  Bastards.

  When I started the Detective Damien Drake Series, I wanted to write something raw, real, and full of characters with complicated problems. With Butterfly Kisses, I knew Beckett was going to be a recurring character, but given the subject matter of Cause of Death, it only made sense that his involvement would increase. But even I had no idea that he was going to go off the rails the way he did at the end of the book. I won’t lie; Beckett intrigues me greatly. I’m always looking for characters working in professions who don’t really fit the stereotype, the mold. Kinda like me. Thirteen years becoming a doctor and studying pathology, and now I write novels. Whodathunk it.

  Thanks for coming along on this journey with me. I’m happy to say that it’s only just begun. Plenty of books on the horizon, more murders to solve. Always more murders.

  You keep reading, and I’ll keep on writing.

  Best,

  Patrick

  Montreal, 2017

  And now, keep reading for your sneak peek of Book 3 in the Detective Damien Drake Series, DOWNLOAD MURDER!

  Download Murder

  Detective Damien Drake Book 3

  Patrick Logan

  Prologue

  The whistling was generic, not representative of anything that either of the girls could recognize. It was just a string of pitchless notes that didn’t seem to follow a particular pattern or tune.