Джеймс Паттерсон - The 13-Minute Murder

Beck shrugged. “I’m a licensed psychiatrist.”

“You’re still crazy.”

Beck sighed deeply. “You don’t want to do it yourself? Well. I’m here to help.” Beck picked up the Glock and racked the slide back, jacking a shell into the chamber. He pointed it at Graham, his hand steady.

“Now. Do you want to die?” Beck asked, looking down the barrel at his patient.

Graham was out of his chair in a split second. He knocked the gun aside and landed on Beck with his full weight, toppling the chair over. He and Beck struggled for a moment as Graham tried to get his hands on the gun.

They rolled across the floor together. Graham came up on top, the Glock in one hand. He pointed it at Beck, kneeling on top of him.

For a second, they were frozen like that.

Then Beck looked up at Graham, bleeding from the corner of his mouth where a stray elbow had hit him.

And he smiled.

“You fought,” he said, grinning.

Graham looked confused. Then angry. “Are you crazy? ” he shouted. “Of course I fought you! You pointed a gun at me!”

He got off Beck and let him up, but didn’t take the gun off him. Beck didn’t seem at all worried.

“Dummy bullets,” Beck said. “Wouldn’t fire even if I pulled the trigger.”

Graham eyed Beck suspiciously, then checked the Glock’s clip. If anything, it made him even more angry. “I didn’t know that!” he shouted.

Beck didn’t stop smiling. “That’s right. You didn’t. And you fought me. For the first time since you walked into this office, you did something. You woke up,” he said. “Looks like you’re not quite ready to die after all.”

Graham stared at him, shocked.

Beck stood up and straightened his clothes. He wiped the blood from his mouth with a tissue, and then took his chair again. He gestured to the couch. Slowly, Graham set the gun and the clip back on the table. Then he sat down, too.

“Excellent,” Beck said. “Shall we get started, then?”

Chapter 2

“You pulled a gun on him?”

Dr. Susan Carpenter was, like Beck, a psychiatrist. She was highly trained, widely respected, and thoroughly professional. She’d seen a wide range of patients with deeply disturbing problems, ranging from trauma to schizophrenia to complete psychotic breaks with reality. There were people who came to her convinced that space lizards were about to take over the planet, and others who were certain that the contestants on Survivor were plotting against them.

In other words, she’d heard a lot of crazy stuff without blinking. And still, she looked like she was on the verge of having Beck taken to a padded cell.

“Dummy bullets,” Beck said. “I couldn’t have hurt him if I wanted to.”

“He didn’t know that,” Susan snapped at him.

“Of course not. It would have defeated the purpose. He had to find a reason to live. I gave him one.”

Susan took a deep breath and got herself under control. “Or you could have broken his trust completely. Or triggered a violent episode. Or convinced him that he really ought to commit suicide. Did you ever think of that?”

“Of course,” Beck replied. “I decided to take the chance.”

“You risked your patient’s life.”

“No. I judged him capable of pulling himself out of his depression, given the right motivation. I looked at his history. This is a cop who once charged a man armed with an AK-47 and took him down barehanded. He has been through the door on multiple drug raids. He needed a threat to bring him back to life.”

“You could have done the same thing by talking to him. You could have reminded him of his experiences—”

“I don’t have that kind of time.”

Susan’s expression softened. There it was. Sooner or later, their sessions always came back to this. It was inevitable.

Beck was dying.

“Do you think your condition is affecting your judgment?” she asked.

Beck made a rude noise. “ Condition . Call it what it is. I’ve got a brain tumor. And yes, it’s still killing me. No, it’s not affecting my judgment. I haven’t started drooling or playing with myself in public.”

A month earlier, Beck had been walking to his car when the sidewalk suddenly came up out of nowhere and hit him in the face. He was knocked senseless, and someone passing by on the street called 911. The paramedics took him to the emergency room at Georgetown, where the attending physician knew Beck from several cases he’d consulted on. Beck said he felt fine, he was just a little dizzy, but the doctor insisted on an MRI and a PET scan.

And that’s when they found the tumor. It was a very rare type of glioblastoma that had clearly been growing for some time, undetected. It was nestled deep in Beck’s brainstem, near the parts that regulated his heartbeat and breathing.

Beck saw several specialists. They all said the same thing. Chemo wouldn’t work, because the drugs couldn’t cross the blood–brain barrier. Radiation was too dangerous because the tumor was so close to the critical structures nearby. Which is also why there was no way to reach the tumor with surgery.

The tumor would go on growing, slowly but surely. He’d remain relatively healthy until he wasn’t anymore. He might fall down, and he might have seizures. He might have severe personality changes, memory loss, or delusions. He might lose the ability to walk. Or he might not.

But eventually, the tumor would overwhelm his brain, crushing the parts of it that kept him alive, and he would die.

They had given him anywhere from three months to a year.

Friends suggested that he take a trip around the world, see lions on safari, or just drink margaritas on the beach until it was his time. Beck went back to work. He hated vacations. He didn’t know what he’d do with himself if he wasn’t in his office.

But the doctors were required to tell the medical board about his condition. The board said he had to get another psychiatrist to monitor him, just in case the tumor affected his mental state. It wouldn’t be good to have a psychiatrist with access to patients and a prescription pad if he was losing his own marbles.

Susan seemed like the best person possible to keep tabs on him. They’d both been at the top of their class at Johns Hopkins and had been paired together for their residencies at Georgetown. Like Beck, she specialized in crisis psychiatry—taking the most severe cases she could find.

And she was more likely to put up with him than anyone else. Beck had a reputation as a loose cannon even before he discovered the tumor. He was impatient with theories and studies. He wanted to use whatever worked. It was one reason he was popular with his patients and unpopular with other doctors.

“How are you feeling?” Susan asked with genuine concern.

“I’m fine.”

“Looks like he tagged you pretty hard.”

Beck touched his lip. It was still swollen. “I’m a doctor, not a boxer.”

She didn’t smile. Beck suspected he was in for another version of the Talk.

“That’s my point. You deliberately antagonized a man who gets into life-and-death situations all the time. It could have been much worse for you.”

Yes, it was the Talk again. It usually went like this. She’d tell him he was being reckless. He would nod his head and listen. And then he’d go on doing what he’d always done before.

Today, however, Susan seemed to be out of patience.

“Maybe I should just tell the board to pull your license now,” she said. “You don’t listen. You don’t want to change. And because of your condition—”

“Tumor.”

“—your tumor, you’ve got no reason to change. Do you see that you’re using it as an excuse?”