by Dale Mayer
She slowly sank back down into her chair, studying the other men. Idiot was laughing like a loon. She wondered if he really was losing it or if he cared so little about somebody else’s fate that he enjoyed the idea of Chucky getting locked up in a freezer. But she couldn’t imagine what that had been like. No wonder he was freezing. She looked over at Jonesy. “That’s not good,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “How many of us are there again?”
“I thought just nine of us were here. You and me, Chucky and Winslow, Daniel and Denny, and the idiot over there,” she said, with a nod to Phil. “Oh, yeah, and Herman and Bruce. That’s nine. Now we have Gregor, plus the other two company men and the two new guys, so fourteen total.” She nodded. “So originally the eight crew and me,” she said.
“Right,” he said, “but now we have five more today. Six counting the helicopter pilot, I guess.”
She nodded again. Fifteen total. Fourteen men now. “Hope Denny has got hot food for us.” Her stomach growled on cue.
Jonesy laughed. “We could shut this down, if you want.”
“Well, the power seems to be back up again,” she said. “I did a reset on all the different breakers.”
“That’s often all it is,” he said. “Sorry, I should have done that. It’s hardly your job.”
“I was in all the systems anyway,” she said, with a shrug.
He stopped and looked at her. “Were you? Why?”
“Checking to make sure everything was running smoothly,” she said, as she stood up. “Part of my job.” She smiled and motioned to the door. “Are you gonna check out if there’s food or no?”
“Yeah, we should.” He looked over at Idiot. “You coming?”
Phil nodded. “I am.”
But when he didn’t move, Jonesy sauntered toward him. “Hey, Phil, get off your goddamn program and come on.”
Phil looked at them, frowned, and said, “Is it dinnertime?”
“We’ll check to see if there will be dinner,” she explained.
He looked at her in horror.
She shrugged. “Well, we don’t really know,” she said. “Plus, with that power off, Denny may not make very much.”
“Well, he better,” Phil said, as he stood. “If I’ve got to work my ass off, so does he. And I don’t care if that means he’s out there with a fishing rod.”
She started at that but grinned. “I hear you.”
Together the group walked toward the dining area. She turned and looked back at the offices. The board members were still sitting in the one office. They’d retreated there early on and had stuck it out. She wondered exactly what they were doing, but Mason was on a laptop and so was Nelson. She wished she could talk to him, but it really wouldn’t do any good for her cover. She suspected they had enough work running down all the crew members to take up a dozen men’s time. She could help, if they’d give her a heads-up on it, but, chances were, they wouldn’t take a chance on her getting found out either.
As they all trooped into the dining area, Denny looked up and frowned. “Did I call you for dinner? No. So get the hell out of here.”
Her eyebrows shot up. It never ceased to amaze her how much the cook always ruled the kitchens and how much the kitchens always ruled the rigs.
She walked over to the coffeepot, lifted it, and sighed. “Why is there never any coffee?” She set about putting on a new pot. Denny completely ignored her. She looked over to see Chucky, hugging a big cup in his hand. It explained why there was no coffee; he’d taken the last cup and was hardly in any shape to put on a new one.
What bothered her was there was no Winslow. After she put on the coffee, instead of sitting with the group that she had walked in with, she walked over to Chucky and sat down. “Where’s Winslow?” she asked.
“Gone to check the freezer,” he said quietly. “To see if, in any way, it could shut without my knowing it.”
“I thought they all had to be so that you could open them from inside or out.”
“Yeah, I thought so too.” His tone was morose, and his shoulders were stiff.
“Do you think somebody did it on purpose?”
He shot her a hard look and then glanced around the room. “How many were in the control room with you?”
She said, “All these guys, plus the company guys are still in the office.”
“That doesn’t leave very many then, does it?”
“Not if Winslow was with you, when the two new guys found you,” she said. She looked over at the others, then lowered her voice and said, “Chucky, is there any chance somebody else is still on the rig here?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “I don’t know why there would be.”
“I don’t know either,” she said, “but I’d have to presume not for a good reason.”
He snorted at that. “You know what? I’ve made a lot of enemies in my life, but facing down that cold storage door was not the way I wanted to end it.”
“Nope,” she said, sitting sideways in the booth. “I figured, in my sleep, after partying all night long on a beach in Tahiti, would be about right.”
He looked at her in shock, and then he started to laugh and said, “Isn’t that the truth. I can get behind that totally.”
Just then the door opened, letting in the two new guys. Chucky immediately lifted a hand. “She just put on fresh coffee.”
Troy looked at him and nodded, then headed to the coffeepot. It had almost finished dripping. He looked at her, lifted an empty cup, and she nodded.
“Yes, please.”
With three cups, the two men came over and sat down at the table with Chucky and Berkley. “Man, I didn’t thank you at the time,” Chucky shook his head, “but I so don’t ever want to revisit that freezer.”
“Well, while you were in there,” Troy joked, “did you at least check that the meat was okay?”
“No way it couldn’t be,” he said. “It was freezing in there. My flashlight battery was damn near gone. So I couldn’t see jack shit.”
Well, that answered one question, she thought, because he hadn’t seen the body bag, given his response just now.
“The generators are still working,” she said quietly. “The freezers are all on thermostats, so it shouldn’t have been an issue.”
“Tell Denny that. Even when everything is moving smoothly, he always sends somebody down to check on the freezers all the time.”
“Makes sense,” Troy said, easing back in the chair. “Just think about it though. He’s got to face you guys if the meat spoils, and he’s got nothing to feed you.”
Chucky snorted. “Yeah, that’s true enough.”
“Where the hell is Winslow?” Axel asked.
“Down checking out the freezers,” Chucky said. “I told him to go ahead if he wanted, but I wouldn’t bother. I’m okay to never go back down there again.”
“And you didn’t see anybody else? You didn’t hear anyone?”
Chucky shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t hear anything that made me suspicious at all. Just that damn door shutting.” He shook his head. “And it’s not exactly an easy door to move, so it wasn’t just the wind. And it wasn’t anything heaving in the ocean. It wasn’t a big jarring that might have unhooked it or anything. You guys can go check,” he said, “but I got to tell you. Nothing would have moved that door except for somebody pushing it closed.”
“So that begs the next question,” she said, her voice quiet. “Who the hell would do that?”
He shot her a hard look. “I ain’t got no idea,” he said. “Everybody is gone. I don’t have a beef with any of these guys.”
They looked around, and she asked, “Where’s Daniel?”
“Which one’s Daniel again?” Troy asked, feigning ignorance.
Chucky shrugged. “The foreman. And I ain’t seen him in a while.”
She looked over at the other two, who both shook their heads. “Well, maybe we should find him,” she said. “Maybe he’s got some ide
a of what happened.”
“The only way that’ll work out,” Chucky said, “is if he was there, and I can tell you that nobody was down there with me.”
“The ghost of the rig?”
“Or maybe the ghost of the missing men,” Chucky said morosely. He stared down at his coffee cup, and it was obvious from the look on his face that he was thinking about death and ghosts and all manner of things unnatural.
“It’ll be fine,” she said quietly. “After a good night’s sleep, you’ll feel better.”
He looked at her with a shaking head. “I doubt it.” He got up from the table, refilled his coffee, and turned, saying, “I’ll go lie down. Denny, let me know when food is ready.” Not giving Denny a chance to say anything, Chucky slammed the door shut and left.
She looked at Troy and, in a low voice, said, “So, where the hell is the foreman?”
He slowly shook his head. “We didn’t see anybody.”
“Why were you at the freezers?”
“Because I was wondering if somebody else had been left behind or maybe one of the dead was gone,” he spoke under his breath, just loud enough for her to hear. “We did a complete sweep of that level. And that’s when we came across the freezers.”
She leaned forward. “Was the body bag still there?”
He looked at her and slowly shook his head.
*
That was the one thing he wanted to bring up with her but hadn’t been able to. They had no clue where that body bag had gone. Lionel’s body was missing, and Troy would like to know why and how. It was the one they especially wanted to go out by helicopter.
“We need to search the other levels,” she announced.
He didn’t bother telling her that they’d already contacted the rest of their special crew, who had just arrived, and they were doing a full sweep too.
“And what about Winslow?” Axel said. “We didn’t see him either.”
“Unless he went down while we came up,” she said. “According to Chucky, Winslow went to check out the freezer door.”
Troy didn’t like the idea of anybody getting locked in. But he was even more aggravated at the thought that somebody had deliberately tried to lock Chucky in.
“The other question was, who knew that Chucky was going down to the freezers? Just Denny? Or had somebody else heard the request?”
“Maybe we ought to go look for Winslow,” Axel said suddenly.
Troy looked at him. “Gut instinct?”
“Yeah,” he said, “and it’s not feeling very good right now.”
The two men hopped up, refilled their coffees, and headed out. Troy knew that she wanted to go with them. But that was the last thing he wanted. At least she was surrounded by people. And, maybe at the end of the day, that would be what saved her. Yet he couldn’t count on any of them who were sitting here. But what he did know was that something else was going on outside. And they had to get to the bottom of it and fast.
He followed Axel downstairs to where the freezers were. They found no sign of anybody, but power had been restored, and, with the lights on, they quickly took a solid look into each of the three freezers. Not only was the body not there but neither was Winslow. They moved back around to the medical side and checked the morgue refrigerator trays. Still the same number of bodies, so they were just missing the one. Troy turned to Axel. “Of course it’s the one we really wanted to see, right?”
“Of course it is,” Axel said, his hard gaze glancing around. “Why are no cameras in here?”
“There should be, shouldn’t there?” He pointed up to where a camera had been because the mounting was still there. “Somebody took it down.”
“What kind of a place is this?” Axel murmured.
“I’ll say a murderous one,” he said.
“Maybe we should take a closer look at some of these bodies.” Axel walked over, closed the door to the medic room, and locked it. “Maybe now we’ll have a bit of privacy.”
With a final search around to make sure they had no cameras on them now, they pulled out the first body and checked it. His head was at an odd angle, and he was fully dressed, but they found no bullet holes, and nothing else appeared to be different. “I suppose he could have broken his neck falling down the stairs or from the blast,” Axel said, as he studied him.
Troy nodded. “That one will be inconclusive. Not without X-rays to see what other damage there is. We don’t know, but a hard blast could have turned his guts to jelly.”
On the second one, his face was beaten. His nose was broken, but his hands were clean, and nothing else appeared to be damaged. “I would think a fight,” Axel suggested, “but look at his hands.”
“Or again, maybe something battering him in the face, but I don’t know what,” Troy said, as he shook his head, and they zipped the body back up again. By the time they’d gone through all seven bodies, they still had no clue.
“No burn marks on any and I don’t see a ton of blood with open wounds, so I’ll say it wasn’t the blast on the last five for sure.”
“Well, the blast and the fire, both got shut down fairly quickly,” Axel said. He turned to look around. “I’m surprised the medic didn’t stay.”
“Maybe he needed to get off too. Or maybe he’s one of these dead we haven’t ID’d yet.”
“Often there’s more than one medic. So there should have been a first aid medic, like Denny, a doctor, like our missing one, and a third somebody to relieve both of them. Especially when the rig’s manned by almost two hundred individuals on a normal week.”
“Depends on the crew,” he said. “You and I have both been places where anybody who was a paramedic or an EMT could have had enough training for what they needed here. A helicopter would have taken off with anybody who had a serious injury, as soon as he was stabilized enough to survive the flight anyway. It’s not like they would be doing surgeries here.”
After a thorough check of the place, and still none the wiser, they unlocked the door and stepped out. Only to come face-to-face with Winslow.
He glared at them, his hands on his hips. “What the hell are you two skulking around here for?”
“We were looking to see who locked your friend in the freezer,” Troy said immediately.
He fell back a step. “You’re the ones who let him out. Maybe you’re the ones who locked him in?”
“Well, maybe,” Axel said. “But, if I were you, I wouldn’t go down that pathway though because you’re wrong. We opened it up.”
His face fell a little bit. “Something strange is going on here,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s getting dangerous.”
“It sure is,” Troy said. “For a start, seven bodies are in that cooler.”
He looked at him, looked at the cooler, and said, “What are you talking about?”
“In the morgue, a temporary morgue,” he said, “are seven dead bodies.”
“No, there should be two,” Winslow said. “Just the two. One of the guys was blasted off the side. His face was slammed into the column of the steel walls there, and that killed him. The other one, his neck was broken from the fall.”
“Well, I get that,” Troy said. “Except we were told that you had no fatalities and that four were missing. Still your version accounts for two of the dead, but what about the other six?”
“What six?” He looked at Troy in horror and rushed past them toward the morgue room. As they watched, he opened it up and cried out when he saw the body bags. He looked back at them. “Help me open these up,” he said. “I want to see who these people are.”
With his assistance, all seven body bags were opened. He confirmed the two killed in the blast two days ago, Roger and Clarence; and then he stopped and tapped the next one. “This is our doc,” he said. “Jesus Christ, what the hell’s going on here?” After he ID’d each of the three managers, he then opened the last one, and he shook his head. “This one’s just a kid. He was Daniel’s brother’s buddy.”
&nb
sp; “Yeah,” he said, “and where is the brother?”
“He’s missing.” Winslow looked at him. “Remember? Four are missing.” And then he stopped and shook his head. “Wait. But three of the dead are some of those missing. And Lionel was the fourth person missing too.”
“Who is this guy? The brother’s friend, right?”
“This is Charlie. Him and Daniel’s brother, Lionel, they were really good friends.”
“How good of a friend?”
Winslow looked at him and glared. “I don’t give a shit what the kid’s sexuality was,” he said. “As long as he did his job, that was good enough for me.”
“I get that and commend you for it,” Troy said. “But, the fact of the matter is, not everybody might have had that attitude.”
He slowly stepped back, looked at him, and said, “Are you saying somebody killed these men?”
“Are you telling us that they died in the blast?”
He looked down and shook his head. “No, there’s no way.”
“So, how can you possibly not think that somebody killed these men?”
He leaned back against the side, his face pale. He was clearly shaken. “Two of these I knew about, Roger and Clarence, from the blast a couple days ago, although I don’t know if a report was sent in on them yet. You’ve got to realize we have little communication here now, and that’s hardly been our priority,” he said. “But Doc and Charlie? When did that happen? Now the three managers—Stedman and Doug and Pete—were reported as missing, yet they are part of the dead here too. The only one still missing then is Lionel, Daniel’s brother.”
“He’s in the last body bag we found. So is anyone truly missing then?” Axel asked. “Because it sounds to me like all are dead, and something really fishy is going on.”
“You think?” he said. “Jesus, we have to get security in on this.”
“You’re kidding, right? No security is here anymore. The cameras are down throughout half the place, and the whole place is collapsing in on itself. Remember?”
“I remember,” he said. “And I remember that you guys were brought in after the fact. And you’re the ones who are involved in all this shit now. For all I know, you’re the ones who killed these men.”
