by Blake Pierce
“What?” Jenny said, not quite comprehending what he was saying. Her head was muddy, confused. Something was ringing a distant alarm bell. She frowned. “Do I know you?”
He didn't answer, but she was sure of it. She knew him. Where did she know him from?
He moved closer to her, and Jenny shrank back, but she was unable to go anywhere. The car was the only thing supporting her weight, her legs seemingly turned to jelly. The right leg, the one that had been injured in the accident, was threatening to give way at any moment. She wasn't far enough along in her physiotherapy for it to handle this kind of stress.
“It's okay,” he said, his voice calm and gentle. She remembered it, remembered him speaking to her before. “Don't worry. I'm not going to hit you again. I just need to make sure that you stay asleep for a little bit longer.”
And when his hand flashed out, holding a needle, she remembered where she knew him from. She was still reeling from the realization when he plunged it into her neck, holding her steady with the other hand. It was like there was nothing she could do to resist him, so dizzy and groggy and out of control of her body. Her eyes fluttered closed, as whatever it was that he injected into her neck slowly began to filter its way into her system, and all she could think of was how beautiful it would be to sleep now instead of having to worry about any of this anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
Laura rested her head on the leather of the car's steering wheel, as if it could bolster her brain and give her the strength that she needed to get through this thought process. She hardly had anything to work on, but that didn't mean she couldn't do it. She'd solved cases before with less, she knew. Sometimes, all it required was a bit of faith in your own abilities and a reminder that this was your job. The thing you'd been training for your whole adult life to do.
She reviewed everything in her head as much as possible, trying to put herself inside the shoes of the killer. The first thing was that they knew he was obsessed with time. That had to be a huge part of it, just like Nate had pointed out. The clocks, the timers, they had to mean something. It had to be something to do with the way he chose his victims, too.
The victims had died and then been resuscitated. Now he was killing them. It was like he was enacting some kind of cosmic justice, like he thought that no one should be given a second chance.
Was that it? Was it linked, somehow, to how long the victims had been given in the world after almost losing their lives?
No, that didn't quite make sense. Stephanie Marchall's accident had happened a couple of years ago, while Veronica Rowse had been in the car crash one year ago. They had both been suspended on the platform for the same length of time, twelve hours. While Lincoln Ware, who had had an extra six months of life, had been standing up there for only ten hours. The difference didn’t make sense. There had to be some kind of math that explained all of this.
Laura opened the file again, going through the EMT reports with a closer look, trying to spot anything that related to time. There was one thing: in each of the reports, the EMT specifically noted how long the person had been clinically dead for.
And that was very interesting indeed.
According to what Paul Payne had written, Veronica and Stephanie were each dead for an approximated full minute, or sixty seconds. Both of them had been in serious conditions when he arrived, but he had been able to note the moment that their hearts stopped beating due to the quick actions of others in calling for help. Stephanie Marchall's heart attack had only really gotten into full swing after the ambulance had arrived, with a concerned coworker recognizing the signs that it was about to happen from having witnessed the same thing in her father.
As for Veronica, the injuries she had sustained in the car accident had been bad, and when Paul Payne arrived with the ambulance, the firefighters were just cutting her out of the vehicle. It was during this transition that her own heart had stopped, before she could be laid down on the ground beside the car for Paul and his colleague to bring her back to life.
One minute each. The time matched.
Lincoln Ware was the final data point, the point they needed to match in order for her theory to be proven correct. Laura scanned through the document again, noticing even as she did that the style of the report was noticeably different. It was easy to see that it had been written by a different EMT. Here, though, Holly had written that Lincoln was thought to have been unconscious for only fifty seconds.
It worked.
Laura grabbed her notebook out of her pocket and started scribbling down the numbers, checking her math. If she worked it out as one hour of time on the platform for every five seconds the victim had been dead before revival, then it worked. A full minute for Veronica and Stephanie gave them twelve hours on the clock. Fifty seconds for Lincoln equated to ten hours on his timer. It worked.
Laura stared at the numbers again, running them through in her head a third time just to be sure. It was hard to be completely confident. As always when looking at any kind of data, more points would allow you greater certainty about a theorem or formula. In this case, they only had three. And Laura wasn’t complaining about that. She didn’t want him to add any more for them.
It was as close to being sure that she could be. The numbers worked. She understood now. She could see the way the killer saw the situation. These people had died. They should have remained dead, according to him. They had been out for a short period of time, and now he was re-creating that time in 1:5 scale for them to consider the end of their lives before it happened.
It was the kind of twisted thought process that someone might have if they actually thought they were being compassionate. Doing the victims a favor by giving them that last bit of time. Giving them one more chance to cheat death again. If they escaped, maybe he would be satisfied to let them live. If they didn’t escape, they died.
But just like the old, arcane methods that would have been used for testing a witch, there really was no way out. They weren’t being given a completely fair chance. They were tied up in ropes so tight they had little chance of ever escaping – certainly not without great cost, like Veronica had paid. And she hadn’t even made it out in the end, either.
Laura sat up straight behind the wheel, taking a deep breath. It made sense now. And what could she do with the information?
She had to use it to track the killer down. He had to have known about the reports, somehow, or he couldn’t have known exactly how long to leave each person up there on the platform. Paul Payne had confirmed for her that no one, not even him, was on all three teams of first responders. That meant it had to be someone who wasn’t at the scene but would have been able to read the reports.
She got out of the car, having not even moved it during the whole time she was sitting inside, and marched back towards the administrator’s office.
***
The administrator seemed much less pleased to see Laura than she had the last time. “I don’t know what more I can tell you,” she said, gesturing frustratedly from her position seated in front of the archival desk. “I printed off every bit of information that was in those files.”
“I know, and I’m very grateful for that,” Laura said. She was having to concentrate hard not to snap, not to fire her words out at a mile a minute. She was almost there. She almost had him. She checked her watch; it was coming up to twelve noon. She was on a deadline here, quite literally. If she didn’t get to him soon… “I actually did make some great progress with what you gave me, so I’m thankful for that. Now, I need to know who would have access to this information in any way.”
“Access to it?” the administrator asked, blinking quickly. She uncrossed her legs and crossed them again in the other direction, like she was nervous. “Well, there’s me…”
Laura glanced over her, quickly. Then she dismissed the idea entirely. The administrator might have been tall, but she certainly didn’t look strong. Her manner was wrong, too, and more to the point, she had finely manic
ured fingernails that ended in precise points and were decorated with little flowers. There was no way that kind of manicure could last on someone who had spent the last few days dragging unconscious victims onto platforms and building DIY dropping mechanisms.
“Who else?” Laura asked, impatiently. “Anyone who could see the files themselves or was involved in an administrative way in getting the reports together.”
“The supervisors would have seen the reports from the EMTs, the doctors, and the technicians separately,” the administrator said, her eyes going up to the ceiling as she pulled the information out of her own mind. “Then the doctors would have seen most of the reports over time, in order to follow up and make sure that they had provided the best possible care. Plus, they would receive verbal reports from the EMTs when the patients were brought in.”
Laura shook her head thoughtfully. She’d already seen the names of the doctors involved in treating each patient, the techs who ran the processes, and the supervisors who signed off on each report. They were different in each case. Depending on who was on shift, as well as the specific treatment that the patients needed – they’d mostly been in different departments, except for a small few areas of overlap that Laura already knew gave them nothing.
“Someone else,” she said. “Who would have the information in the EMT reports, specifically? Forget about the others for now.”
The administrator tapped one of those decorative nails against her lower lip thoughtfully. “Hmm… I suppose, the dispatcher? They would be able to review the first responder reports after calling in help. They add their own reports, if needed. Usually it isn’t, because we have the recording of the call in the first place.”
“Recording?” Laura asked, her ears pricking up somewhat. “So, you have access to those on the computer?”
“Not here,” the administrator said, shaking her head regretfully. “You’d have to go direct to the dispatchers’ office for that.”
Laura nodded, trying not to feel too disheartened. In the past, being able to hear the voice of the killer, or even the sound of his breathing, had helped her to trigger visions. She’d been able to solve cases based on that, figuring out where he would be next. But this time, it wasn’t going to be that easy. Of course, it wasn’t.
“Do you have a record of the dispatchers that dealt with each call?” Laura tried, thinking that might be more fruitful.
“Actually, I can find that out,” the administrator said, reaching out her hands for the files that Laura already had in her possession. “We use a certain code, which we use to identify staff members. I can tell you what it means.”
Laura handed her the files, watching her flip open the page to the EMT reports sitting right on top. “Here, see? At the top of the page.” She tapped on a five-digit code at the top of the page, next to the letters ‘DIS’ and above the space for the details of the time and date the ambulance was sent out.
Laura had seen that code before. She’d assumed it was some kind of regional code, a code to show that they’d all come from the same hospital.
She’d assumed that because all three codes were the same.
“Who does that correspond to?” she asked, with her heart in her mouth.
The administrator tapped around on her computer screen. With the angle she had it turned at, Laura could just make out her opening a spreadsheet and scrolling through it. “Let’s see… Here we are. That staff code belongs to a dispatcher called Earl Regis.”
“And where can I find Earl?” Laura asked, already getting up from her chair.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
The dispatch headquarters was easy to find. Laura strode inside on a mission, well aware that time was ticking down. She hadn’t heard from Nate all morning since they’d split; she had no idea whether that meant he’d found nothing and was still looking or had found something and was looking into it. Either way, she needed to keep going. She fired him a quick text explaining what she’d found and where she was as she waited at the reception desk for someone to take her inside. Let him do with the information what he would.
“Hi.” An older woman with dreadlocks tied back behind her head emerged from the doorway into the main center of the dispatch unit, letting out a stream of conversations before the door closed behind her again. “I’m told you’re looking for Earl?”
Laura nodded, lifting her badge to show it. “That’s right. I need to speak with him regarding an open investigation.”
“I’m afraid he’s not working today,” the woman said. She had a badge pinned to the front of her shirt that marked her out as a supervisor. “Can I help you in any way?”
Laura hesitated. She wanted to get moving on as quickly as possible, go and find Earl and drag him into the precinct. But if he wasn’t home, she would be right back to square one, trying to find him somewhere across the whole city. And given that it was past noon now, she had a feeling there was a good chance he wouldn’t be home.
“Yes,” she said, decisively. “Is there somewhere we can talk privately?”
The supervisor nodded, leading Laura through another doorway into a quiet and cozy room set up with a soft armchair and a small coffee table. There wasn’t much room for anything else, but as soon as the door closed, Laura felt like they might have been out on the moon for how isolated it was. There was no sound from outside at all, and with the door closed and a small window only showing the briefest glimpse of the leaves of a tree outside, there was no way you would imagine you were inside a dispatch center.
“We use this as a little booth for when things get too overwhelming,” the supervisor explained. “Somewhere for the staff to retreat to and process things. No one will disturb us while we’re in here.”
Laura nodded gratefully. “How long have you worked with Earl?” she asked, getting right to the point.
“Oh,” the supervisor said, her eyes going to the ceiling. “Wow, let me think. Probably… six or seven years, I’d guess. I don’t know exactly when he joined, but it was before my promotion.”
“So, would you say that you know him quite well?”
The supervisor shifted, moving her arms and then settling again like she wished she had a cup of coffee she could pick up. “I think so. Why?”
“What’s he like?” Laura asked, avoiding the question. “His character, personality? What can you tell me about him?”
“Um, he’s a good guy,” the supervisor said. “Very detail-driven.”
“How so?”
“He gets things worked out very precisely,” the supervisor replied, making a loose shrugging gesture. “I don’t know how to explain it. Well, for example, he can tell you exactly how long the average response time would be from any given hospital or precinct to any given location in the city. He’s really good with data and working things out like that.”
The word time seemed to chime in Laura’s head. A red flag going up, an alarm bell sounding. “He’s interested in time?”
“Oh, yeah, definitely,” the supervisor nodded. “He likes to review each of the calls after the fact to make sure that things are as efficient as they can be. He’s even called up the hospital before and suggested new routes for the ambulances to help them get there quicker. I’d be lying if I said they appreciated it, but he’s got a good heart. He’s just trying to help.”
Laura thought for a second. “Does he keep his own records of this kind of thing? It sounds like it requires a lot of working out.”
“Yeah, he keeps a journal on his desk where he records everything,” the supervisor said. “I think he does it all in his head, and on the paper. You know? No calculators. He’s super smart.”
“Can I see that journal?”
The supervisor hesitated, obviously reluctant to break the trust of a coworker by showing someone else his private notes.
“It’s extremely important,” Laura said. “Like I said, this case is currently ongoing.”
The supervisor bit her lip. “It’s not…” She glanced down at
her hands before continuing, like she was unsure she wanted to finish. “It’s not the clock killer case, is it?”
“What makes you assume that?” Laura asked.
“You got really interested when I said he was interested in time,” the supervisor pointed out, almost shyly. Gingerly. “But… I don’t think he’s got anything to do with that. Earl’s a lovely guy, really. He took this job instead of retiring. He just wants to help people.”
The mention of his age wasn’t necessarily promising, but then again, it wasn’t the end of the lead either. If they stayed in shape, Laura knew there were sixty- and even seventy-year-olds out there who were stronger than she was. “At any rate, I’d really like to talk to him and see that journal, just to rule him out of our investigation,” Laura said. She kept her tone soothing, as though she believed what the supervisor was saying completely. It was the best way to ensure compliance. “If he’s as good a guy as you say he is, then I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. And I’d love his help in shedding some further light on the case, given that he was the dispatcher on duty at a number of important moments that could really give us some good clues.”
“Okay,” the supervisor said, wringing her hands for a moment. Then she got up, hesitantly, but at least she was doing it. “I’ll go and fetch it for you now.”
Laura checked her cell phone while the woman was out of the room, seeing if she had any messages. She didn’t. She sighed to herself, wondering if Nate was sulking. Maybe he’d gone to call Chief Rondelle and get her yanked off the case or something. If so, it was more important than ever that she work fast on this.
Laura got up and left the quiet room, stepping back out into the reception area. The supervisor appeared from the dispatch room almost immediately afterwards, holding a journal and a scrap of paper.
“I wrote down his address for you,” she said, still holding both items firmly in her own hands, close to her chest. “I think he should be at home today. He didn’t say anything about having plans.”
