“That's what I'm here for,” Beckett said with a grin.
The woman pulled up the patient data.
“There’s a lot here… you want me to print it out for you?”
“That would be great. If you could, would it be possible to print out the information for the patients with Werner, CJD, and Cystic Fibrosis who weren’t fortunate enough to meet with the Reverend in time? Would that be possible? We’re planning on using them as a control group.”
“Yeah, of course.”
Less than five minutes later, Beckett had a stack of paper with all the information he needed to call out the snake oil salesman masquerading as a priest.
“Thank you so much for helping me out. If there’s anything I can do, and I mean anything…”
The nurse started to blush, and she averted her eyes.
“Well, if there’s a spot for a co-author…?”
“Yeah, of course. These papers are padded with everyone’s names from the secretary to the uncle no one wants to talk about. I’m sure we can squeeze you in. What’s your name?”
“Maria Higgs.”
Beckett held out his hand.
“Dr. Holmes,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
Chapter 36
Either Wayne had become a nomad, or someone was taking justice into their own hands.
The thought resonated with Sgt. Yasiv.
He kept coming back to Winston Trent committing suicide, the only sure-fire way of determining the outcome of your life. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Trent was an egomaniac who loved the spotlight, even going so far as to taunt Bentley Thomas’s grieving parents in the press. Sure, there was civil suit pending against him, but that shouldn’t have bothered Winston. After all, he didn’t have any money to give should he lose the case. But the majority of his legal troubles, the serious ones, were over.
Yasiv pictured the photograph of Wayne and Winston he’d spotted in the manager’s trailer. Nothing about Trent suggested that he was a person who would commit suicide.
He was suddenly struck with the unshakable feeling that Winston Trent’s suicide and Wayne’s disappearance were linked, much like how the two men had been in the photo.
With the hopes that learning more about the former would lead to information concerning the location of the latter, Yasiv decided to spend the morning at the Medical Examiner’s office to see what he might be able to dig up.
Once there, he flashed his badge and asked to speak to Beckett.
“I'm sorry, Officer, but Dr. Campbell is on vacation for the next week. Is there someone else you’d like to speak to?”
Yasiv thought about this for a moment.
“You know what? Can you tell me who signed off on Winston Trent’s suicide?”
“I don't have access to that information here,” the secretary informed him. “But I can put you in touch with someone in the ME’s office if you'd like.”
Yasiv nodded. He could easily find out this information on his own—it was somewhere in his files—but maybe the ME could provide additional insight.
“Sure, that’d be great.”
The secretary picked up the phone, barked a few words, then hung up.
“The office is just down the hall; take the first left and Dr. Nordmeyer will meet you there.”
Yasiv thanked the woman and headed in the direction she’d indicated.
After two wrong turns, he found the door marked ME and knocked. A woman with short black hair and mousy features opened it.
“Hi, I'm Sgt. Yasiv of the NYPD.”
The woman nodded and allowed him to enter. Then she closed the door behind him.
“Dr. Karen Nordmeyer. The secretary said you're looking for information about Winston Trent’s case?”
Yasiv nodded.
“What do you want to know? That case was closed months ago,” the woman’s stone-faced expression was a clear indication that she wasn't pleased about him visiting and asking questions. Yasiv understood; he wouldn’t like it if someone was snooping around his old cases, either.
“I was just hoping that someone could go over the finer details with me. Are you familiar with the case?”
Dr. Nordmeyer crossed her arms over her narrow chest.
“I signed off on it.”
Ah, and that's why you don’t want to talk about it.
He thought back to another recent case in which the DA had been convinced that Armand Armatridge had been murdered by his wife. It only came out later that the man’s death was just a horrible accident. In a city as big as New York, it wasn’t uncommon for mistakes to be made. Yasiv just hoped that this wasn’t the case with Winston Trent.
“Great, then you’re just the person I want to speak to,” he said with a smile that wasn’t returned. “Is there anything you can remember about the Trent case as being odd? Out of the ordinary?”
“There’s nothing ordinary about suicide,” Dr. Nordmeyer snapped.
Yasiv quit smiling. He was getting sick and tired of people clamming up on him. No one wanted to talk about Wayne Cravat or Winston Trent or anything at all that might make his life a little easier.
“Yeah, okay, I get it. But was there anything strange about the suicide itself, anything that was out of the ordinary—you know what I mean.”
“The only thing weird about that case was Dr. Campbell’s insistence to wrap it up quickly.”
Yasiv raised an eyebrow.
“Beckett?”
Dr. Nordmeyer nodded.
“Yeah, he's the Senior ME after all.” The way she said those words—Senior MD, after all—was a cleartell that she wasn’t fond of the man. This didn’t struck Yasiv as odd, however, because he knew Beckett could be an asshole. “He said that there would be a media shitstorm if we took our time with that one. Then he said some nonsense about the shoe fitting or whatnot.”
“But you were the ME on the case, right?”
Another curt nod.
“So is there anything at all you can remember about it that didn’t fit.” When Dr. Nordmeyer’s expression soured, Yasiv decided to take a more direct approach. “Look, I'm not trying to second guess anyone, put doubt in anyone’s mind, or anything like that. The truth is, I’m not even interested in Winston Trent; I’m looking for an associate of his by the name of Wayne Cravat. But things keep linking back to Trent’s suicide.”
Dr. Nordmeyer glared at him for a moment longer, and Yasiv thought that all was lost. But then her face relaxed.
“Well, I'm confident that it was a suicide; all the telltale signs were there. The guy was probably remorseful over what he’d done and decided to finish himself off.”
You’re wrong about that one, Yasiv thought. Winston Trent was just about the furthest thing from remorseful you could be.
“But now that you mention it, I did find trace amounts of midazolam in his blood.”
“Midazolam?”
“Yeah, it’s used to relieve anxiety and invoke sleepiness, often as part of an anesthetic cocktail.”
“It's an over-the-counter drug?”
Dr. Nordmeyer shook her head emphatically.
“No, of course not; it’s a highly controlled substance.”
“So how would someone like Winston Trent come across the stuff? I’ve never heard of it on the streets.”
“That’s your domain, not mine. But it's a lot harder to get midazolam than it is heroin, I’ll tell you that much. Heroin is also cheaper, more effective, and more readily available.”
And yet it was in Winston Trent’s blood when he committed suicide.
“Anything else that stood out to you?”
“No. That’s it. Like I said, all the telltale signs of a suicide were there.”
“Okay, thanks for your help.”
Dr. Nordmeyer led him to the door, but she was hesitant, as if there was something she wanted to add, but was nervous about saying it for some reason.
“Is there… is there anything I can do for you?” Yasiv a
sked.
The doctor looked back at her desk.
“If I had something to give you, something that I’m not sure means anything at all but is strange and I need to show somebody, could I do that now? I mean, show you, but anonymously?”
The woman’s rambling was so out of character that Yasiv might have been convinced that he was speaking to a completely different person.
She’s scared of something, he realized. Terrified.
“Yeah, of course—anonymously.”
Dr. Nordmeyer hurried back to her desk and took out a folder. She handed it to him, but when Yasiv went to open it, she placed her palm on top.
“Please, not here. Like I said, I don't—I don’t know if it means anything, but I figured because you were here…” she let her sentence trail off. “Anonymously, of course.”
Yasiv slipped the folder under his arm.
What the hell is this all about?
“Thanks again, doctor,” he said before heading back to his car. He was just about to open the folder when his phone rang.
“Hello?”
It was Dunbar and he didn’t sound happy.
“He lied to us. He fucking lied to us.”
Yasiv rubbed his temples. He needed a cigarette, and badly.
“Who did, Dunbar? Who lied to us?”
“Brent Hopper, that's who. He was friends with Wayne and Winston. He lied to us.”
Chapter 37
Armed with the printouts and a handful of buccal swab kits, Beckett made his way to the nearest bar. He had an hour to kill, which is about the time he estimated Suzan would be expecting him to be undergoing tests.
Beckett grabbed a pint and started going over the file that the pretty nurse had provided him. It took him all of three minutes to figure out what Reverend Cameron was really doing; it was so obvious that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before.
The Reverend was simply using a swab from the person who really had the genetic disease as the before sample and a swab from a normal, healthy-ish person as the after.
It really wasn’t even that clever.
Beckett sipped his beer and pulled out his phone.
The Reverend claimed to have attended medical school at Brown University, but Beckett couldn’t find a record of him in any of the graduating classes.
“Interesting… did the man lie about that, too?”
In fact, he couldn’t find a record of the man anywhere in the university at all. Beckett considered the idea that the Reverend hadn’t even attended Brown in any capacity, when he stumbled across an article from May 2008.
Med Student Reprimanded for Administering Unsanctioned Treatments.
Beckett would have glossed over the article, but the inlaid photograph caught his attention.
It was a younger, thinner version of Alister. In fact, if it hadn’t been for his cold, dead eyes, Beckett might’ve thought it was someone else.
What added to the confusion was the fact that the man’s name wasn’t Alister Cameron, but Alfred Cooper.
Intrigued, Beckett read the entire article. The jist of it was that Alfred had been part of a study group that was testing novel gene editing treatments first in yeast, then in rodents. But things were apparently moving too slow for little Alfred, so he decided to expedite things. The man injected a patient with a slurry of CRISPR DNA sequences without approval. Thankfully, nothing happened to the patient, but poor little Alfred was reprimanded.
It was amazing to Beckett that the man wasn’t expelled or sued, but it was Brown after all. If this had happened at a real medical school, Alfred or Alister or whatever his name was would likely find himself behind bars.
“Always trying to cut corners, am I right?”
Alister’s motivations were crystal clear now, but how the man managed to rope Dr. Blankenship into his scheme was another question entirely.
The doctor struck him as a straight-edge kind of guy, but money could cause any edge to bend. And, judging by the church’s coffers that appeared to be bursting at the seams, there was enough of it to go around.
Rev. Cameron might be performing in a small church today, but next month? Next year? Beckett wouldn’t be surprised if the man soon had a setup that rivaled some of the largest Evangelical parishes in the South. He’d have a TV show, a book deal, a goddamn cologne named after him.
But Beckett couldn’t possibly allow that. It just wasn’t right.
“Can I have a shot of Jamison, please,” he asked the waitress as she walked by. The woman nodded and then asked him if he wanted a fresh pint, as well.
Beckett checked his watch.
“Sure, why not.”
While she went to fetch his drinks, Beckett briefly—very briefly—considered just letting this nonsense play itself out; after all, the charade couldn’t go on forever. He and Suzan could have a normal vacation, go sightseeing, enjoy themselves like normal people.
But after the shot and second beer, he found himself absently fondling the buccal swabs in his pocket.
Normal people? How boring…
“I could do that,” he said to himself. “But then these would go to waste, and I just loathe when people create waste for no reason. I have to do this; I have to do this for the environment.”
“I'm sorry?” the waitress asked.
“I said, check please,” Beckett replied with a smile.
No, normal just wouldn’t cut it. After paying his bill, Beckett went straight to the parish to meet up with his old buddy Rev. Alister Cameron. Or was it Dr. Alfred Cooper?
Meh, he was never good with names, anyway.
Chapter 38
Yasiv met Dunbar back at 62nd precinct.
“So, you're saying that all three were friends? Trent, Wayne, and Brent?” Yasiv asked.
“Yeah, that's what the man at the meeting told me. When we interviewed Brent, he said he didn’t even know Winston Trent.”
“I remember,” Yasiv said. “Why would he lie about that? I mean, he already admitted to knowing Wayne, it’s not like we were going to judge him for the company he kept.”
Dunbar was busy typing away at his computer now and didn’t answer.
“What are you doing?”
Dunbar hit a few more keys before turning the monitor to show Yasiv.
“Check it out.”
Yasiv leaned in close and squinted at the blurry image. It appeared to be some sort of check made out to Happy Valley Trailer Park. The number ‘212’ was scrawled in the notes section, which was Wayne’s trailer number.
Dunbar clicked his mouse and another check replaced the first, this one for trailer 116; Trent’s trailer.
“Okay, I don’t get it,” Yasiv said, leaning back and rubbing his eyes.
“Look at the who signed the checks, Hank.”
Yasiv took another peek, then pulled away.
“Holy shit; Brent Hopper.”
Dunbar smiled.
“He signed all the checks, dating back to right before Wayne Cravat was arrested.”
“Why would Brent be paying Winston and Wayne’s rent?” Yasiv asked.
“Remember what you said about someone paying them off?”
Yasiv nodded.
“Well, I guess we found out the who. Now we just need to find out the why.”
Yasiv tapped his chin as he tried to piece it all together.
“Why… why… why… I visited the ME this morning, asked some questions about Trent’s suicide. The ME told me something… strange.”
Dunbar sat up straight in his chair.
“What? What’d they say?”
“The ME said that while she was convinced that Trent’s death was a suicide,” Yasiv began, “she found some sort of calming agent in his blood. Something that you can’t just buy in a store or get off the streets.”
Dunbar blinked three times.
“Oh my God, you think… you think that maybe Brent took out Winston Trent? And that he's responsible for Wayne going missing?”
Yasiv wa
nted to caution against jumping to conclusions, but Dunbar was too excited to slow down.
“Shit, maybe they were all in on it together, maybe all three of them took part in killing Will Kingston. Winston probably tried to blackmail Brent, and he—”
“Let’s not get out of hand here. All we know for certain is that Brent is paying both the other guys’ rent.”
“And that he lied to us. And that Winston Trent was probably murdered.”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Yeah, but it makes sense, doesn’t it?”
It was a stretch, but Yasiv had to admit that nothing that Dunbar had said was impossible.
“I don't know. What I do know, however, is that we should bring Brent Hopper back in and have another chat with him.”
All of a sudden Dunbar's expression soured.
“Don't say it,” Yasiv said glumly.
But Dunbar couldn't resist.
“If we can find him, that is.”
Chapter 39
“We normally don't do this, hold service twice a day, but there is someone here who desperately needs our help,” Rev. Cameron announced to the crowd. Thanks to the service’s impromptu nature, word hadn’t quite gotten around, and the church was less packed, making it easier for Beckett to elbow his way to the front.
“I want you people to put your hands together for a very brave soul. Her name is Brittany Laberge and she was just recently diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.”
Beckett shook his head. The man was profiting off the pain and suffering of others. It was reprehensible.
“Cystic fibrosis is a fatal condition and, to be blunt, the traditional outlook for Brittany is not great. The good news is that with the Lord acting through me, I will be able to provide her with a long happy life, free of the disease that has taken so much from her already. Please, everyone put your hands together for Brittany Laberge.”
Everybody started cheering, everyone except for Beckett; he was trying not to reach up and throttle the Reverend.
Cystic fibrosis was a terrible, deadly disease for which there was no cure, regardless of the man’s claims.
Surgical Precision Page 12
