Organ Donor_A Medical Thriller

by Patrick Logan

  Beckett pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, knowing that no matter how discrete he was going to be, the call would likely come back to haunt him. Especially given his connection to Damien Drake and the problems the man was now facing.

  But he was running out of options. The longer it took to figure out where these organs were coming from and who was sending them, the higher the body count.

  There was one person in the NYPD, however, someone he’d worked with in the past that he thought he could still trust.

  Beckett scrolled through his contacts until he came across the name he was looking. After a brief hesitation, he clicked dial.

  The phone rang several times before a male voice answered.

  “Detective Dunbar.”

  “Dunbar, it’s Beckett… Beckett Campbell,” he replied hesitantly.

  “Beckett! How are you? How was your vacation?”

  Beckett closed his eyes and an image of Donnie DiMarco’s body floating below the surface of the water, his eyes wide, his mouth slack, filled his mind.

  “It was… eventful. How’re you doing?”

  Dunbar paused and when he spoke again his tone had become less enthusiastic.

  “Ehhh, okay, I guess. Stressed, dealing with this Drake shit. It’s been—well, I guess you know how it’s been, given that he’s your friend. I’m just… I’m just exhausted.”

  In truth, Beckett didn’t know how it was. In fact, after what had gone down with Ray Reynolds and the Church of Liberation, mainly Beckett losing his finger and nearly dying from ethanol poisoning, he’d tried to distance himself from Drake. But he’d been drawn back to deal with Bob Bumacher and Boris Brackovich, both of whom were involved in a human trafficking and sex slave ring.

  He loved Drake like a brother, but given his newest… hobby… Beckett had to sever ties with the man; bad luck and bad news followed him around like the plague. Drake was like the King Midas of Scatology; instead of turning everything into gold, everything he touched turned to shit.

  “But enough about me,” Dunbar continued, “What’s up, Beckett?”

  Beckett chewed the inside of his lip and chose his words carefully.

  “As you’ve probably heard, the new McEwing Transplant Unit just recently opened and I’m on the Board of Directors. We were discussing the discrepancy between our records of young people who chose to be organ donors, the rate of car accidents, and the number of organs we actually receive. I’m wondering if their stickers aren’t accidentally peeling off their driver’s licenses.”

  Beckett cringed; it was a horrible, circuitous way of getting around to what he really wanted to know. And it was pretty fucking stupid, too.

  “Well, uhh, not sure if I can help you there—I’m a homicide detective, Beckett.”

  “Yeah, I know, it’s just… I’m just grasping at straws here, Dunbar. I’d like to see one of the licenses from a young person who died in a car accident just to make sure. Do you know of any car accidents that happened lately, specifically those involving males between the ages of 18 and 35?”

  Beckett closed his eyes and shook his head.

  Specifically… you moron.

  “Uhh, I can check if you want. Make a call or two. That it? That why you rang?”

  “That’s it. I know this is a strange request, but I wasn’t sure who to reach out to, given my connection with Drake and his current… issues. Oh, and if you have any skin tags or unsightly rashes you want me to examine, I’m your guy. Free pathology for you and your crew!”

  Dunbar chuckled and Beckett breathed a sigh of relief.

  “All right, if I discover any planter’s warts, I’ll come see you. Take care, Beckett. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  Beckett stared at his phone for a moment after the call had ended before putting it in his pocket.

  Then he rubbed his eyes and looked at the schedule that Suzan had taped to his desk.

  Class was starting in ten minutes, and while it was probably the last place Beckett wanted to be right now, there was one person he needed to see.

  He had several specific questions for one of the new residents, one whose name just happened to match that of the new transplant unit.

  Chapter 23

  On his way to class, Beckett called Suzan twice, leaving a message the second time. His tone had come off as apologetic, he knew, but he didn’t go as far as to actually apologize.

  After all, slow or not, Brent Taylor had broken into his house and sneaked up on him. The young man was lucky that all he’d received was a bloody nose.

  Others had received far worse.

  Even though Suzan hadn’t answered either of his calls, Beckett was still disappointed to find that she wasn’t in the classroom with the residents when he entered.

  “Morning,” he grumbled. Several of the residents replied with a good morning of their own, but Beckett ignored them.

  He was only here for one reason and one reason only: Grant McEwing. Everything else he was about to do and say was part of a charade.

  If Grant was the one sending him the organs, playing this sadistic game, then Beckett would play along, for the time being.

  But by the time it was all over, he’d be the one who was calling the shots.

  With a broad smile, he held up a stack of papers.

  “Test time!” he exclaimed.

  Almost immediately, the smiles fell off the residents’ faces and hands shot into the air.

  “Put your hands down, this isn’t the Third Reich. Besides, I already know what you’re going to say: oh, Dr. Campbell, yesterday you told us that this residency was different, that there weren’t gonna be any tests, blah, blah, blah. But here’s the thing: while I don’t believe in this shit, the department, and the department head, Dr. Hollenbeck, are stuck in the Jurassic Era. So, this here,” he shook the stack of pages in his hand, “is the R-1 final theory exam. And you’re going to take it today.”

  This was new grounds, even for him. While it was true that he loathed the traditional testing structure, the department decreed that all residents needed to pass the final theory and practical exams to move on to year two.

  Still, there was nothing stating that Beckett couldn’t help them along their way.

  Well, actually, there was. Beckett just chose to ignore this fact as he did with most of the bureaucratic and archaic nonsense that was part and parcel with an educational institution.

  “Final?” one of the two women in the class, Maria, or Mary, or something like that gasped. “How can we take the final? We haven’t even studied!”

  Beckett shrugged.

  “It’s better just to get it out of the way so you can actually learn something. Did you find yesterday interesting? Insightful? God forbid, did you actually learn something of value?”

  Several residents nodded, a gesture that Beckett mimicked.

  “All right then, I see that we’ve got a couple chicken hawks in the room. Well, yesterday was just a taste of what classes are going to be like this year. And, if you were paying attention, you should be able to answer each and every one of the very basic, and very boring, questions on the exam.”

  Margo started to protest again, but Beckett shook his head.

  “If you don’t like it, go see Dr. Hollenbeck, bring him some prune juice and Metamucil. Problem is, I’ve got tenure so there’s not much he can do about it. What he’ll most likely do is transfer you to—God forbid—one of the other forensic pathology instructors.” Beckett shuddered. “So just write the damn test—please. Trust me, I’m sure you’ll all do fine. In fact, I assure you.”

  With that, he handed out the tests and then took a seat at his desk. After confirming that all the residents were begrudgingly starting to scribble away at the sheets of paper in front of them, Beckett flicked on his computer.

  He was surprised to find an email from the lab guy waiting.

  Beckett didn’t like emails. He didn’t like texts either; he preferred phone calls. You
can trace an email, there was a record of a text, but phone calls… there’s no way to tell what actually took place during the call.

  Thankfully, this email is simple enough.

  I can confirm that the first liver and heart came from the same individual. Also, someone came by to retrieve the liver. Someone from the transplant unit—said they found a match.

  The cheeky bastard even signed off as the Lab Guy.

  Someone came to get the liver? Dr. Singh, maybe? Or that salad-finger guy Sir England?

  Beckett debated writing back to clarify, but then decided against it. No paper trail for this one.

  Instead, he rose to his feet and made his way into the hallway. He was aware that the residents were staring at him, but he didn’t care. He didn’t give a shit if they cheated on their tests, not that he thought they would. He was more concerned with their problem-solving skills than with their ability to regurgitate useless factoids that one could look up on the internet in seconds.

  Once in the hallway, he pulled his cell phone out and started to dial the Lab Guy’s number.

  He wanted to know who had picked up the organ and how a match could have possibly been made given that it wasn’t in the UNOS system or any other, for that matter.

  But Beckett hesitated. Calling and asking would only make the Lab Guy even more suspicious. Perhaps suspicious enough to start asking questions of his own…

  His thoughts turned to the secretary at the transplant unit, the one who’d scorned him for trying to bribe her.

  I can ask him in person, maybe offer him a little cookie to keep his mouth shut.

  Just as Beckett slipped the phone back into his pocket, he caught sight of someone approaching in his periphery.

  Suzan.

  Beckett’s first instinct was to make a joke, to make light of the situation as he often did, but he decided against the idea. Something told him that if he made a joke now, he would likely find himself missing more than just part of his finger by day’s end.

  A similarly-shaped appendage, perhaps, but not a finger.

  “Suzan, I’m sorry. I was just—”

  “Save it,” she spat. “Brent’s gone.”

  “What? What do you mean, gone?”

  Suzan’s scowl deepened.

  “Last night, I checked him into the halfway house you suggested, but when I went this morning to take him out to breakfast, he was gone—and nobody would tell me where he went.”

  Chapter 25

  “That’s it, put your pencils down,” Beckett said as he entered the classroom, this time with Suzan in tow.

  Several of the residents looked up at him as if you were joking, but Beckett quickly quashed that idea.

  “I’m serious. Test’s over.”

  Beckett scanned their faces, waiting, wanting one of them to say that they still had more time. Thankfully, no one did—not even Margaret. This was unexpected, but what was more surprising was Grant McEwing. The man was sitting comfortably in his chair, the test booklet closed in front of him, his fingers interlaced on top.

  “Suzan is going to come by and collect the tests—that’s it for today. I know, I know; yesterday you chopped up bodies for a few hours and today you wrote your final exam. I assure you, the workload will increase over time; we’re starting slow, but things will build. And while my methods may be unconventional, almost all of my residents have gone on to hold prestigious positions—several of which as department heads straight out of residency—across the country. So, stick with me and you’ll be rewarded.”

  At this point, despite his speech, Beckett was almost positive that at least one of them would complain to Dr. Hollenbeck, but he didn’t give a shit.

  After all, he had tenure and the senile bastard was just as likely to forget about the complaint the moment the resident left the room as he was to act on it.

  And, besides, Beckett had more important things to think about now.

  Like, figure out where the goddamn organs were coming from and what happened to Brent Taylor. Sure, the man had broken into his house, but he was Suzan’s friend. And if she was this torn up about him, then it was Beckett’s duty to help her out… wasn’t it?

  He exhaled loudly, which drew the attention of a male resident as he walked passed.

  “Dr. Campbell?” the man with hawkish features asked in a tentative voice. Beckett waited for him to continue and eventually he did. “Can I ask you something?”

  Beckett’s reply was immediate.

  “No.”

  “But I just—”

  “I said, no. Now’s not a good time.”

  Suzan, who was in the process of stacking the tests, shot him a look and Beckett immediately regretted his reply.

  Sure, his methods were unconventional, but Beckett always had the residents’ best interests at heart. And while he liked to rib them, tease them, his actions weren’t cruel, they served a purpose: mainly, to challenge them and their assumptions in order to generate a better, more capable forensic pathologist.

  But recently… he’d just been mean.

  Beckett opened his mouth to call the man back, but he had already left the room.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Suzan asked now that they were alone. Beckett lowered his eyes to the missing digit on his right hand and he rubbed the numb flesh absently. “Ever since… ever since the Virgin Gorda, you’ve been acting differently. This isn’t like you, Beckett. I mean, no one would ever accuse you of being the most compassionate or empathetic guy in the room, but you turned Brent away yesterday without even a discussion. I wouldn’t have brought him to you if I thought you were going to do that.”

  Beckett sighed and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t feel great about what had transpired with Brent, despite the man breaking into his house, but there were more pressing things on his mind.

  “There was another delivery,” he said, without looking up. “Another heart.”

  Suzan recoiled.

  “What? Beckett… you have to tell someone. There’s something… this isn’t right.”

  Beckett’s eyes shot up.

  “I did — I told you.”

  Suzan threw up her hands.

  “The police, Beckett; you need to call the police. Can’t you be serious, just for once?”

  “I am serious, Suzan. And I can’t call the police—you know why. I bet it’s one of those assholes that are gunning for my job who are sending the organs. They’re just waiting for me to go to the cops, to alert Internal Affairs. This time, IA won’t just ‘suggest’ that I go for a vacation, but they’ll make it permanent. They might even re-open the whole Craig Sloan thing. I’m just going to have to figure this out by myself.”

  By myself… the words of an unintentional, but they stung Suzan just the same.

  “Yourself, huh? So, what am I, then? Just a TA? Just a fucking hired hand?”

  She was more than that to Beckett—much more. But Beckett couldn’t get it out of his head that if he was going to go down for the things he’d done, that she would go down with him. It was more than that, too; every time she saw his tattoos, he felt guilty. Not so much for the men’s lives he’d taken, but as a reminder that he was lying to her.

  That he couldn’t be himself around her—his true self. And one thing Beckett prided above nearly everything else, was being honest.

  “I guess so,” he said. And then he shoved the tests in her direction. “See if you can get these marked by the end of the day.”

  The hurt on Suzan’s face was almost more than he could handle, and it was all he could do to hold his ground. It was time to start distancing himself from her, Beckett knew.

  Suzan opened her mouth and looked as if she were about to say something, but then her jaw snapped closed. She grabbed the tests, tucked them under her arm and left.

  “Fuck,” Beckett groaned when he was finally alone. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Suzan, but a little hurt now was better than a lot of hurt later.

  With a heavy exhale, he rose to h
is feet and was about to make his way to the door when his phone started to ring.

  “What?”

  “Beckett? It’s Dunbar. I looked into the car accidents like you asked.”

  Beckett sat back down.

  “Sorry, just been a long day already. What’d you find out, Dunbar?”

  “So, uhh, it’s strange but there’ve been no fatal accidents involving young people over the past week or so. There was an old guy who had a stroke while driving and veered into a tree. Pronounced brain dead at the scene by one of your guys. His wallet was still in evidence, and I took a peek—he was an organ donor, and the stick was, uhh, stuck pretty good. Not sure if that helps.”