The 13-Minute Murder Read online

  “Where is this branch office?” Beck asked.

  Morrison looked back at him in the rearview.

  “Just relax, Doc. We’ll be there before you know it.”

  And Beck suddenly knew he was in serious trouble.

  Memory is a tricky thing, Beck knew. Stress affects the brain and interferes with the transfer of images from short-term to long-term memory. And then, sometimes, those same memories can return in an instant.

  At that moment, Beck remembered the color of the gunman’s eyes.

  Because he was looking right into them again.

  Chapter 6

  Beck was handcuffed and trapped in the car with Kevin Scott’s killers.

  He had no idea what to do.

  He tried desperately to think. He looked out the window again. They seemed to be driving into the very worst section of town—probably so that when Beck’s body turned up, it wouldn’t be considered unusual. Maybe they’d say he was here to buy drugs. Or maybe they’d say he was shot trying to escape.

  Beck knew Kevin Scott had been hiding something. But now he knew it was something worth killing for.

  And these two federal agents—if they were federal agents at all—wanted to find out if Beck knew it, too.

  Beck tried to measure his own pulse. His doctors had told him stress was bad for his condition. His body was working hard enough to regulate itself with the interference of his brain tumor. He could suffer dizzy spells or weakness or seizures if he pushed himself too hard, they’d told him.

  And there was also the chance that he was suffering a paranoid delusion. It happened with his condition. People stopped thinking normally as the tumor increased pressure and swelling in sections of the brain. Was it possible that he was just imagining the danger he was in?

  Beck didn’t think so. He didn’t feel crazy. He knew psychotic patients rarely did, but he was pretty sure he was still firing on all cylinders. Surprisingly, he felt almost calm. Even though these two men wanted to kill him, it didn’t scare him as much as he thought it would. Beck already knew he was going to die—soon. He’d made his peace with that.

  But these men were probably going to torture him as well. They wanted to know what was in his head, and what Kevin Scott had said in his last hour on earth. They would do whatever it took to get that information out of Beck, even though Scott had not told him anything but the word “Damocles.”

  Even if Beck told the agents that now, they wouldn’t believe him. They’d hurt him until they were satisfied he wasn’t lying.

  Beck could handle the idea of dying. But these men were going to subject him to agonizing pain.

  Was he going to let that happen?

  Hell, no. If he had to die, it was going to be on his own terms.

  That made his next decision easy.

  Morrison was still driving too fast. Beck waited for the next yellow light. Predictably, Morrison gunned the engine to barrel through the intersection.

  And then Beck flung himself into the front seats via the space between them, and landed on Morrison, knocking his arms away from the steering wheel. Beck began kicking and biting and flailing, his own hands still bound behind him.

  Morrison shouted an obscenity. Howard began to scream something, then caught one of Beck’s knees on his mouth.

  Beck felt the steering wheel spin and the car tipped crazily.

  There was a blaring horn, and then Beck was flying into the air as something hit the SUV like a fist.

  Beck saw shattering glass. He felt the airbags explode all around him, burning him with white powder as they deployed. The SUV whirled like a top, and then came to an abrupt, crunching halt.

  Chapter 7

  Beck blinked and sat up. His side hurt like hell. He shook a little bit and safety glass fell from his face, his clothes, his hair.

  He was still in the front seat. The windshield and passenger windows were broken. Deflated airbags sagged from every surface along the dashboard and interior. Morrison groaned underneath him.

  Howard was still in the passenger seat. Blood trickled from his forehead where he’d cracked his skull against the doorpost. He looked at Beck, momentarily dazed. His lip was split where Beck had kneed him before.

  Howard’s eyes snapped to focus on Beck. He didn’t speak. He growled. And without hesitation, he went for his gun, which, lucky for Beck, he couldn’t whip out with no trouble because Beck was half lying on top of him.

  But Beck knew he’d get it sooner rather than later, and in the cramped space of the SUV’s front seat, there was almost no way he could miss Beck if he fired.

  If Beck was still being civilized, he might have been scared. But he was far beyond that by now.

  And it’s hard to scare a man who already knows he’s dying.

  What’s he going to do? Beck thought. Kill me?

  He reared his legs back and kicked as hard as he could. He caught Howard in the face. He heard a muffled snap and knew that he’d just shattered the man’s nose.

  Howard’s head bounced against the doorpost again. Beck kicked him one more time for good measure.

  Beck heard Howard’s gun drop to the floor. He hadn’t realized that the man had been able to get it so soon.

  Morrison was thrashing around under Beck by now, pinned by Beck’s weight. Beck struggled to get off him. He realized that Morrison was having trouble using one arm. Then he saw why.

  The SUV had been knocked out of the intersection when it was hit. It had come to a halt against a streetlight, which smashed in the driver’s-side door on impact. Morrison’s left arm was trapped in the narrow space between the crumpled door and the steering wheel. It kept Morrison from grabbing Beck or holding him down. Or drawing his gun.

  About time I got a little bit of luck, Beck thought. He struggled to sit up again. He had to get out.

  Howard was blocking the passenger door, and that was crushed by the impact as well. But the windshield was gone. It was basically an open invitation for Beck.

  He used his forehead to smash Morrison’s head as hard as he dared, without giving himself a concussion, and when he saw Morrison’s eyes roll back in his head, he kicked Howard one more time, then rolled across the dash, shedding more glass as he went, and then slid down the hood of the SUV.

  He looked up and tried to get his bearings. There was a garbage truck in the middle of the intersection, its front smashed in where it had hit the SUV. The driver stood by, staring at the damage, looking stunned. Morrison, shaking off the hit to his head, was shouting something at Beck.

  For a moment, Beck didn’t know what to do.

  Then a bullet hit the brick facade of a building, less than ten feet from his head, and he saw that Howard and Morrison had their guns out and were shooting at him.

  With his hands still cuffed behind him, Beck began to run.

  Chapter 8

  Beck ran, his head down, sprinting as fast as he could through the unfamiliar streets.

  He had no phone, no wallet, no money, and there were two killers with badges right behind him. There was also the slight matter of him being handcuffed.

  He had to get help. He had to get off the streets. Any moment now, a police car could stop him, or someone might see him, and then how would he explain this? He’d be on his way to jail, and probably right back into the custody of Morrison and Howard.

  He didn’t think anyone would believe him if he told them that the agents killed Kevin Scott. He barely believed it himself. But he knew what he saw. He just had no idea why.

  Beck needed to find out the answers if he wanted to stay alive. He had to find out why Kevin Scott had been killed, and what those men wanted with him.

  First, he had to get these damned cuffs off. He felt like a duck, waddling along with his hands locked behind him.

  He turned down another corner blindly as he saw a car approaching. He was on a small, mostly residential street with a few businesses tucked in between the blank faces of apartment buildings and crumbling brick buildings.
Then he saw exactly what he needed.

  An auto repair shop. It was a small, independent operation, not a chain. An older African-American man in coveralls worked in the one-bay garage, spinning a tire off its wheel.

  Beck ran across the asphalt to him.

  “Hello,” Beck said. And then realized he had no idea what to say next.

  The man looked up from the tire at Beck, his expression blank. The name tag on his coveralls read LOUIS.

  “Ah, listen,” Beck said, thinking hard. “I’m having a bit of a problem.”

  Louis’s mouth curled into a slow grin. “Yeah. I bet you are.”

  “I was wondering if you had any bolt cutters? Or anything like that?”

  “I might,” Louis said. “What exactly would you want with them?”

  Beck wondered if Louis was screwing with him on purpose. Still, he was the only hope Beck had right now. Beck turned around and showed him the cuffs.

  “Do you think you could cut these off?”

  “I could,” Louis said slowly. “But that’s not exactly my line of work. And I’m not sure that whoever put you in those wouldn’t come looking for me.”

  Beck turned back to him. He wanted to scream at the man to just cut the damn things off. But he forced himself to calm down.

  “Well, I could pay you.” Damn it. No, he couldn’t. No wallet. “Um. Eventually. I was sort of mugged.”

  “Sort of?”

  “It’s complicated. But if you can help me, I promise I’ll pay you something later. I swear.”

  “I think I’m going to need a little more explanation than that,” Louis said, his eyes serious despite the grin.

  Beck thought fast. He imagined trying to tell this man that he was on the run from federal agents who were also murderers. He didn’t think he’d get very far with that story.

  He took another look at Louis. One advantage of being a shrink: he was used to reading people quickly. Louis seemed like a basically decent guy. Attentive to detail. A business owner. So, independent and self-contained. Which meant he was suspicious of outside authority. He trusted his own gut.

  He’d help Beck, but only if he had a compelling story. A reason.

  Beck looked for a wedding ring. Didn’t see one. Looked for any religious paraphernalia—a cross, or a church calendar. Nothing like that on the walls of the shop.

  It came to him in a flash.

  Beck sighed and his shoulders sagged. He did his best to look embarrassed. It wasn’t too hard.

  “You ever have a fight with your girlfriend?” Beck asked.

  Louis’s grin got even wider. “No, not me. I do everything she tells me.”

  “Well. That’s sort of how I got into the handcuffs,” Beck said, and tried to laugh. “It was supposed to be a game.”

  “A game. Right.”

  “Yes. She said she wanted to try something a little, um, kinky.”

  “Kinky. And that sounded good to you.”

  “Well, you know. She made it sound better than it turned out.”

  “I’ll bet. So how did you get here, looking like you’ve been beat up?”

  “Well. She wasn’t exactly my girlfriend.”

  Now Louis shook his head in mock sadness. “Oh, man. Let me guess. She was, uh, what do you want to say, a professional.”

  Beck tried to look ashamed of himself. It was surprisingly easy.

  “Yeah. And then her—well, I guess it was her pimp—”

  “You got rolled.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

  “Well, you should probably call the police. Those cuffs could be evidence.”

  Now Beck knew Louis was screwing with him. But he plunged ahead. “Ah, yeah, see, I would. But—”

  “But you don’t want your wife to find out,” Louis said.

  Beck nodded.

  Louis laughed out loud for a good while. Beck looked down and waited it out. He felt like he deserved an Oscar for this.

  When Louis finally stopped laughing, he said, “Stay right here.”

  Louis walked into the tiny office off the main garage bay. He was gone for a long time. Beck couldn’t check his watch—because of the handcuffs, of course—but it felt like hours. Beck looked in through a grimy window in the door. Louis appeared to be checking the screen of his phone. What was he doing in there? Was he calling the police himself?

  Beck felt sweat trickling down his sides and stinging a cut he didn’t know he had on his forehead. He imagined Morrison and Howard driving up the street any second. The world seemed to spin for a moment. He took a deep breath and forced himself to remain calm.

  Louis finally came back with his phone and a small, thin strip of metal. “Turn around,” he said, and then Beck felt him tugging on the cuffs. Louis suddenly pushed one of the cuffs tighter. Beck felt the metal sink deeper into the skin of his wrist. “Hey!” he said.

  “Just hold on, I won’t hurt you any worse than your girlfriend,” Louis said. And then Beck felt the cuff pop open.

  A second later, Louis did the same thing on the other wrist, and Beck was free.

  He turned around, and Louis was holding the cuffs and the metal strip and grinning. “All done,” he said.

  “How did you do that?” Beck asked, genuinely amazed.

  “The shim undoes the ratcheting mechanism of the cuffs,” Louis said. “Saw it on YouTube.”

  He put the cuffs and the strip of metal into Beck’s hand. “Here,” he said. “You keep these as a souvenir. And you should probably watch the video yourself, in case you have any more problems with any other girlfriends.”

  “I owe you,” Beck said as he pocketed the cuffs.

  Louis grinned again. “No charge,” he said. “It was worth it just to meet a man with worse luck with women than me. Now, I suppose you’ll be wanting to use the phone?”

  Beck took a moment to assess the situation. He was alone, with two killers after him. One man was already dead, and it was clear he was supposed to be next. He couldn’t risk going to the police, who might hand him back over to the killers. He had no idea what he’d fallen into, and no idea how to get out of it.

  But he knew who he could trust.

  He took Louis’s phone and dialed.

  Chapter 9

  Susan looked at him from the driver’s seat. Her voice was full of concern when she spoke.

  “Are you absolutely sure you’re feeling all right?” she asked.

  Beck restrained the urge to shout at her. He’d probably ask the same thing if one of his patients came to him with this story.

  And she was the only person he could turn to right now.

  She’d picked Beck up at Louis’s shop after he’d called her. She looked over his injuries—a cut on the forehead, bruises, and scrapes—and put him into her car. All he’d told her over the phone was that he’d been in a car accident, and now he was stranded without his car or cash.

  Louis hadn’t said anything about the handcuffs, which were still in Beck’s jacket pocket. He just muttered quietly to Beck, “Don’t see why you’re running around if you’ve got that at home.” Then he grinned and waved as Beck and Susan pulled away in her Volvo.

  Susan wanted to take him to the hospital, immediately. And so Beck told her what had happened.

  She’d pulled to the side of the road and parked her car. Then she looked at him, and began speaking to him in the same tones that she’d use to talk a jumper off a ledge.

  “I’m sure you believe this is what happened, Randall,” is how she began.

  He saw the sadness in her eyes. He knew what she was thinking. She believed that he’d finally begun to unravel, that the tumor was eating away at his ability to think, and he was suffering from delusions.

  He was almost flattered that she seemed so moved. But the rest of him was angry and impatient. He didn’t have time for her sympathy. He needed to find out why someone wanted him dead.

  Beck wanted to have her drive back to where the SUV wrecked to see the damage, but he didn’t want to
take the chance that they were still there.

  And after a few minutes, she lost her therapeutic voice and her temper, and they were both yelling at each other in the car.

  “Just a minute,” Susan said. She picked up her phone and tapped the screen. A news app brought up headlines for Washington, DC. “There’s nothing here about a shooting anywhere near your office.”

  “Then they must have told the police to keep it quiet.”

  Susan gave him another skeptical look.

  “I know how paranoid that sounds,” Beck said. “But I know what happened.”

  “Do you?” she said. “Think of all the times you’ve had patients convinced that someone was out to get them. Think of how they acted. Do you see any resemblance?”

  “Look, if I’m making this up, then where did I get these?” Beck snapped, and showed her the handcuffs.

  “I’m not sure I want to know,” Susan snapped back. Then she got her temper under control. She breathed deeply and started again. “Please. We should at least get your head looked at. An MRI or PET scan. Maybe the car accident shifted the tumor, or increased the pressure on your brain. You could have a blood clot. You might stroke out at any moment.”

  “I feel fine,” Beck said, although he didn’t. He felt tired and dizzy, but he wasn’t about to tell Susan that. “Listen to me. My patient is dead. And they want to kill me, too. I know it sounds paranoid, but you know me. You know the difference between people who are crazy and people who are not. You’ve spent your whole life doing this. Look at me: am I crazy?”

  Susan took a long look at him. “All right. Let’s say this is true. Let’s go to a lawyer. I have a friend, she’s a former assistant US attorney, she could—”

  “No,” Beck said flatly. “No lawyers.”

  Susan threw up her hands. “You won’t go to the police, you won’t go to a lawyer, you won’t go to the hospital. So what are we supposed to do, Randall? How are we going to find out what’s happening to you?”

  Good question, Beck had to admit. Then he remembered something that had been nagging at him since he got into the SUV with Morrison and Howard.