The 13-Minute Murder Read online

  Beck shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll be dead.”

  Then he walked out.

  Chapter 3

  Kevin Scott scowled like Beck owed him money.

  Like a lot of Special Forces soldiers, he was compact and muscular. All gristle and sharp edges. He looked at the office with contempt. Too quiet, too beige, too soft.

  Beck wasn’t particularly surprised. Scott had been an Army Ranger for seven years. He’d endured grueling training just to have the chance to sleep on rocks in the desert while people shot at him. Guys like Scott were not usually into the touchy-feely crap. It was always the first hurdle he had to overcome.

  Because as tough as he was, Scott was also coming apart, according to the reports in front of Beck. The local VA office had referred Scott for psychiatric treatment after he had been arrested in a bar fight. He’d nearly crippled three men after an argument about the Redskins devolved into a full-on brawl. Only the fact that they attacked him kept him out of jail.

  So it was pretty clear Scott needed help. But Scott wasn’t an ordinary soldier. He was part of a unit that carried out top-secret missions for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a few places that US soldiers weren’t supposed to be. As a result, only a psychiatrist with a security clearance was allowed to talk to him. Beck was one of the few people on that list because of his experience in dealing with Special Forces veterans.

  But it meant that Scott had been forced to wait for almost a month while the paperwork and red tape cleared.

  Even though they’d never met, Beck had read Scott’s file and it was obvious that he was getting worse. He was shifting in his seat, agitated, and kept checking over his shoulder, like he expected someone to come through the door.

  Beck figured there was no time to waste—for either of them. “So,” he said, “who do you want to kill?”

  Scott nearly jumped in the couch. He looked at Beck like he was crazy. “What? Why would you say that?”

  “Well, you put three guys in the hospital. You seem pretty pissed off at someone. Who do you want to kill?”

  Scott made a face. “It was just a fight that got out of hand. I’m only here because the court said I had to get counseling. I’m fine.”

  “Right,” Beck said. “You’re fine. So breaking a guy’s collarbone and another guy’s arm in three places is just a fun night out for you? Maybe we should go to Vegas together. I can’t wait to see what you do there.”

  Scott rolled his eyes at Beck. Nobody got his jokes. “I told you. It was a fight. They started it.”

  “And you finished it.”

  “That’s what guys like me do,” Scott said, looking him in the eyes for the first time. “We handle things other people can’t. I know you get a lot of wackjobs in here. But I’m not one of them. Trust me. I’m fine.”

  He really sold it. It was almost convincing. Beck could see why people would follow him into combat. But Beck knew better.

  “The thing is, Kevin, you don’t seem fine. The VA’s counselor talked to your wife.”

  “Jennifer?” Scott looked worried. “Why did they bother her?”

  “She’s concerned about you. She says you came home fine from your last tour. You were handling everything. You got a job, you were dealing with civilian life—and then, about three months ago now, you began to act differently. You began sleeping with a gun on the bedside table. You started drinking. You’d disappear at night and on weekends. And when she called your job, they wouldn’t tell her where you were.”

  Scott was growing more anxious, picking at the fabric on the chair, shifting around. Beck thought he wanted to jump up and run out of the room.

  “She called my work?”

  “She cares about you. Maybe she thinks you’re having an affair.”

  Whoops. That was the wrong thing to say. Scott stood up and pointed a finger in Beck’s face. “Hey! I love my wife! You watch your damned mouth!”

  Beck sat as calmly as he could with a trained killer in his face. “So you’re not having an affair.”

  “That’s right!” Scott snapped. “I’m not! And I keep telling you, I’m fine! So you sign whatever little piece of paper you have to, and you let me go back to my life and you leave my wife out of this!”

  Beck looked up at him, waiting. Then he said, “No.”

  “No?” Scott loomed even closer.

  “No,” Beck said. He really wished he had a gun with real bullets. But he didn’t look away.

  For a long moment, Scott stood there. Then, Beck could tell, he started to feel stupid. He sat down again.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  That clinched it for Beck. This guy was not mentally ill. He’d lost control, sure. But he got it back way too fast. He was angry and scared, but he was not suffering from PTSD. There was something else going on.

  “I think there’s something you’re not telling me, Kevin,” Beck said.

  Scott looked back at him. There was something in his face. He opened his mouth, as if to start speaking. Beck could almost feel it. This was the moment where most of his patients began to open up—to reveal what brought them into the office in the first place.

  “You ever done anything really bad, Dr. Beck?” Scott asked.

  “Yeah. I have. What did you do, Kevin?”

  Scott laughed, then almost choked.

  “Nothing yet. But…”

  “But what?”

  Scott looked at Beck again. He suddenly stood up. “Forget it. Forget I was ever here.”

  He went to the door and flung it open.

  Beck got up and went after him. He grabbed Scott by the arm. “Hey, wait a minute—” he said.

  But he didn’t get anything else out. Scott shoved him back, sending him flying.

  “Leave it, Doc,” he snarled. “You’ll live longer.” Scott stomped away.

  It took Beck a minute to get to his feet. He was getting tired more easily these days, and his balance was off. Probably the tumor. But he was also angry. He never gave up on a patient, and he never backed down.

  And if Scott beat the crap out of him, well, he was dying anyway.

  Beck raced down the stairs of his building, breathing hard. He reached the lobby, but Scott wasn’t there. He ran out the double doors to the street, where he saw Scott crossing the road to his car.

  Beck was about to yell something at him.

  Then a black SUV came screaming around the corner. It was on top of Scott in seconds. Scott turned and saw it, and started to run.

  But he wasn’t fast enough. The barrel of a gun emerged from the SUV’s open window, and Beck watched helplessly as Scott was cut down by a hail of bullets.

  Chapter 4

  Beck sat on the edge of the sidewalk and looked at the blood on his hands.

  It had been a long time since he’d had blood on his hands.

  As a med student, still doing his rotations in surgery and emergency medicine, he’d been up to his elbows in it, all the time. He’d seen his share of gunshot wounds in those days.

  So when he saw Scott hit the ground he knew two things:

  Scott was probably dead already.

  He had to try to save him anyway.

  The black SUV had peeled away, tires smoking as it rounded the corner. For an instant as the car approached, Beck made eye contact with the shooter. He wore a black ski mask. His eyes, the only part of him that was visible, stared coldly back at Beck, and then Kevin Scott was down and the SUV was gone.

  And then Beck was tearing open Scott’s jacket and shirt, desperately trying to stop the bleeding.

  But it was no good. Scott’s chest looked like raw meat, with multiple bullet wounds opening holes in his chest so that the life poured right out of him. There was a flicker of life left in his eyes as he looked up at Beck, unseeing.

  He said one word. It made no sense.

  “Damocles,” he gasped.

  Then he choked and more blood poured from his mouth. The flicker in his eyes
went out.

  His chest stopped heaving.

  Scott was dead.

  The police and paramedics showed up fast. Beck’s office was on a quiet, upscale block, not far from several embassies. It was not the kind of neighborhood that got a lot of drive-by shootings.

  The cops pulled Beck away from Scott’s body and sat him down. The paramedics took a look at Scott and didn’t even go through the motions. They just covered him up.

  The police took Beck’s statement and asked him if he’d seen either the driver or the passenger. Beck told them about the ski mask.

  But that was all he really knew. He was surprised at how useless he was as a witness. He shouldn’t have been. He knew that severe stress—like seeing a man gunned down in the street—makes it hard to notice details.

  Still, he couldn’t remember if he’d seen a license plate, or what was on it. He didn’t know what kind of SUV it was. He couldn’t even remember the color of the gunman’s eyes, and he’d been looking right into them.

  The cops left him sitting on the sidewalk while they went to look for other witnesses. And Beck looked at the blood on his hands.

  He sat that way for what seemed like a long time. Trying to understand what happened. His mind kept racing. He didn’t like where it was leading him.

  In his office, Kevin Scott had been scared. Scott had been anxious. And Scott had been hiding something, even from his wife.

  His wife. Jennifer. With a guilty start, Beck realized someone would have to tell her about her husband.

  He looked up from his bloody hands, to find one of the cops, to tell them.

  But instead, he saw two men in dark suits with serious faces walking toward him.

  Federal agents. Beck had met enough of them to recognize the look. They wore earpieces and off-the-rack suits with the jackets big enough to hide their holsters. You saw them all the time in DC—at lunch, in line at Starbucks, standing outside one event or another.

  These two, however, were here for him.

  “Doctor Beck,” the first one said, offering his hand. “I’m Agent Morrison. This is Agent Howard. We’re with the Secret Service. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Beck took his hand, and Morrison hauled him to his feet. He was about a head taller than Beck, who wasn’t short, with cold blue eyes and blond hair spiked straight up. Howard, his partner, was darker and wider—he looked like he put in serious hours at the gym—with his black hair slicked back and frozen in place.

  They waved their badges at him. He barely got a look. They both wore grim expressions without a trace of sympathy.

  “How did you know the deceased?” Morrison demanded.

  Beck tried to shake off his shock. “I told the other officers—”

  “We’re not the other officers,” Howard snapped. “We want to hear it from you.”

  Beck started again. “He was my patient.”

  “You’re a shrink? What was his problem?”

  “I’m a psychiatrist, yes. And I can’t say.”

  “Not much of a shrink, then, are you?” Howard said. Morrison smirked.

  “No. I mean, I can’t say. Doctor–patient communications are confidential. As I’m sure both of you already know.”

  Morrison and Howard exchanged a look. “Yeah. Thanks for reminding us, Doctor,” Morrison said. “But the guy is dead, and he was walking out of your office. I think we need to know.”

  “And if I had any information that would help someone in immediate danger, I would be ethically bound to offer it. But I don’t. Anything else is private. That’s the law. Why is the Secret Service investigating this, anyway? Isn’t this something for the police?”

  “Are you a doctor or a lawyer?” Howard said, his tone sharp and mocking. “You’re making this a lot more complicated than it needs to be.”

  “You don’t have the expertise to know what’s important and what isn’t,” Morrison added. “That’s our job.”

  “Listen, I have a security clearance,” Beck said.

  “How special for you,” Howard said.

  “What I mean is, if you just call the coordinator at the Department of Defense—” Beck took out his phone to give them the number. Morrison and Howard reacted like he’d pulled a gun. They stepped back. With one swift move, Morrison snatched the phone from his hand and pocketed it.

  “Hey. That’s my phone.”

  “Doctor Beck, you’re our sole witness,” Morrison said. “Let’s not get bogged down in technicalities. We need to know what he told you. And we need to know now.”

  Beck wondered where the hostility was coming from. He’d heard of good cop/bad cop, but this was more like bad cop/bad cop.

  Then he recognized the technique. They were trying to put him off-balance. Make him more pliable, eager to please, by bullying him a little.

  It only pissed Beck off.

  “You want to know what we talked about? Try getting a subpoena. He was my patient. Even dead, he has rights.”

  Howard looked like he wanted to punch Beck. Morrison sighed and rubbed his face with his hands, then pulled Beck aside. He lowered his voice, as if someone might be listening.

  “Look, Doctor. I didn’t want to have to tell you this. We are in the middle of something big, and it involves your client. There is more going on than you know. You have to tell us what he told you. Lives are literally on the line here. I know you’ll want to do the right thing.”

  This was even more transparent than the bullying. They were trying to make Beck feel like he was important—inside a big secret. He really didn’t appreciate the manipulation, which wouldn’t work on a first-year psych major.

  And, for some reason, he just didn’t trust these guys.

  Beck lowered his voice, too, as if he were going to cooperate. “Can you tell me what this investigation is about?”

  Morrison shook his head. “Sorry. Classified.”

  Beck went back to his regular voice, all pretense gone. “Yeah? Then so is what my patient told me. Sorry.”

  “All right then, Doctor. Have it your way.” Morrison stepped back.

  Beck thought that would be the end of it. He turned to walk away.

  So he was surprised when Howard spun him back around, slammed him against a telephone pole, and slapped handcuffs on his wrists.

  Chapter 5

  The police didn’t object as the two agents marched Beck across the street and shoved him into the backseat of their SUV. They said they were taking him to their office for further questioning. The cops nodded. Not their problem anymore.

  Beck realized they were really going to do this—just drag him off to jail, or some locked room, and interrogate him. Unbelievable.

  “You can’t be serious,” he said. “This is basic doctor–patient confidentiality. Any judge is going to laugh you out of court.”

  “Shut up,” Howard said as he dug around in Beck’s jacket and removed his wallet. Then he slammed the door in Beck’s face.

  The window was still open, however. Beck looked at Morrison, who seemed slightly more reasonable.

  “Look. If you’re really going to take me away, someone needs to tell Scott’s wife,” Beck remembered. “Her name is Jennifer Scott. Someone needs to tell her about her husband.”

  “Yeah, we’ll take care of it,” Morrison said. He nodded at Howard, who took out his own phone and dialed a number, then stepped away to talk.

  Morrison got in on the driver’s side and used the button there to roll up Beck’s window. He looked at Beck across the backseat. “Now do as you’re told: shut up.”

  Beck sat and stewed. This was really going to happen. He shook his head. Well, at least I get to cross being arrested off the bucket list. He wondered what would happen to his afternoon patients. He had no secretary who could call them to cancel. They would just show up at his office, and they’d wait. Some of them wouldn’t handle it very well if he wasn’t there.

  It made Beck angrier. But there was nothing he could do about it now.r />
  Howard got into the front passenger seat, and then, without a word, Morrison started the engine and drove away from the scene.

  At first, Beck didn’t pay attention to where they were going. He was too busy trying to think of an attorney he could call. He had a couple of acquaintances who were lawyers, but they did mostly lobbying and corporate work.…

  Then Beck saw that they’d crossed the river and were headed into Southeast DC. Morrison turned off the main avenue and began going down side streets, deeper and deeper into some of the worst neighborhoods in the capital.

  “Where are we going?” Beck asked.

  Howard and Morrison ignored him. Morrison was driving too fast. He ran yellow lights and cut off other drivers. Both he and Howard sat in the same grim silence, eyes fixed ahead.

  There was no partition between Beck and the two agents. He knew they could hear him.

  “Where are we going?” Beck asked again, louder.

  “We’re taking you in for questioning,” Morrison said, sounding bored.

  “Then why are we driving away from H Street?” Beck asked. H Street was where the Secret Service’s headquarters was located.

  “Branch office,” Howard said, still not looking at him.

  The civilized part of Beck’s mind told him that this could all be normal. That he should be polite, and wait to call a lawyer, and this whole mess would get straightened out. That was the part of him that had been a good boy his whole life, the part that told him, like his mother always did, to sit up straight and behave.

  But there was another part of his brain talking to him as well—the part that seemed to have woken up since he was diagnosed with cancer. It was like some survival instinct had kicked in since finding out he was going to die.

  And this part of his brain screamed at him that something was very wrong here.

  Beck looked out the window. The streets were uglier. These were places Beck had only seen in the background on the TV news, usually with a reporter describing the latest gang killing or drug deal gone wrong.