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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.
