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The system was easy enough to learn. Once she’d got the hang of it, she could filter by certain factors – one of which being actions taken by medical staff. Searching for people who were resuscitated brought up a huge list, even when she narrowed it down to the last two years. It made sense. A hospital was for people who weren’t exactly in good health, after all.
But how was she going to narrow this list down from hundreds – thousands – to enough people that she could actually use the data?
She sighed, rubbing her forehead. Maybe another look at the victims they already knew about would help. She refined the search by Lincoln Ware’s name, and then moved to click on the record for his near-drowning incident.
And froze.
There was a second record under his name, also marked with resuscitation. The administrator hadn’t said anything about that before.
But then, Laura had asked her about the first incident they’d learned about. She hadn’t thought to ask if there were more, and without being able to look at the screen herself, she hadn’t known there were more.
She’d relied on a woman who clearly resented having to do the work for her, instead of getting a warrant and going through everything herself.
She’d made a big mistake.
Laura clicked the link and read the report hurriedly, her eyes skimming down the whole page. Lincoln had been readmitted to the ER just a couple of weeks after his first visit. She saw a diagnosis of untreated pneumonia on the first page – apparently, the tests they’d done in the first place hadn’t picked it up. He’d gone home with the infection, assumed he’d just caught a cold from the water of the pool or that his breathing was affected by the trauma and treatment he’d gone through.
But it had been pneumonia.
Even in a young man, untreated pneumonia could be serious. Laura clicked open the EMT report and read it with bated breath – and there, right there in black and white on the screen: he’d called himself, reporting respiratory distress and pains, and the ambulance had responded. They’d started checking him over, but things had worsened rapidly, and he’d ended up having a minor heart attack right there in front of them. Even though they were right there on the scene, the complications of the illness meant it took them approximately fifty seconds to revive him again.
Fifty.
Laura knew it before she even looked. She read it in the tone of the report. She let her eyes drift to the bottom of the page, where it was signed off by the EMT who wrote the whole thing.
Paul Payne.
It had been him all along.
He’d been right in front of her, and she’d let him slip away. She’d been fooled by his lies, his innocent act.
Laura grabbed her jacket and ran towards the doors for the parking lot, knowing she had no time at all to lose.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Paul sat on the steps down into the basement, watching. With the lights off, he was shrouded in shadows. No one could see him here. But it had been important for him to see, this time.
He’d made a new adjustment to the platform. The idea had been to test it out at the grocery store last night, to check it was wor
king, but since the police had taken over the scene, he’d had to change his approach. This was a live test, instead. He wanted to watch to be sure it worked, because he wasn’t going to get a chance to find out otherwise.
The news reports never really said how the victims died. They didn’t go into enough detail. But he really did want them to be painless, and the fact that Veronica Rowse had been reported as having sustained ‘other injuries’ in one report he’d read had troubled him. He’d rigged the platform to fall quicker this time, to snap back and away with a little bounce upwards first. The idea was that it would throw the woman standing on it right now up into the air a bit, so when she fell, the rope snapped taut and broke her neck right away. That was all.
It was a risk, sitting here to watch her. He knew that. But it was an acceptable one. The police knew he liked abandoned places, and so he’d changed something there as well: found a location they wouldn’t think of. Not a barn or a closed-down store or a remote gas station.
A basement.
The idea had come to him like divine inspiration, really. And he was almost completely confident there was no way anyone would trace him here – not unless they were literally following him, and he had been careful about that, too. Gone all around the houses, even with an unconscious woman in the back of his trunk. He’d examined every car behind him every time he stopped at lights, and he was pretty sure that this wasn’t going to be the night he was caught. He’d done everything he could to be sure of it.
The house above his head wasn’t abandoned – just vacant. It had had one elderly owner who’d died recently, and the house was up for sale. Tomorrow evening, there was going to be an open house. Perfect for someone to come in and discover the body. He figured he could set up tomorrow’s platform in another vacant house he’d found, and the police wouldn’t have time to adapt to this new kind of location in time. After that, he’d figure it out. He had reams of research back at home, tons of ideas to use.
The woman on the platform was making a kind of desperate gasping noise, racking sobs that went through her whole body. Paul straightened slightly, wondering if she was going to end up hanging herself before the platform even went down. But the noose stayed in place, and she remained on the platform, upright. Just sobbing.
It was harsh, but it was necessary. She needed to die. She should have been grateful for the extra time that she’d had, not sad that it was ending. Some people just couldn’t see what the universe was giving them.
To get all of that time for free, when she didn’t even deserve it. It was disgusting, really. And now to act like she was having something taken away from her? Some people were so entitled.
Paul got up, checking his watch. She couldn’t see him exactly, but maybe she sensed movement, because she struggled more wildly and tried to cry out against the gag. He ignored her, opening the door that led up and out of the basement and stepping outside. He’d been in there for long enough already. He had to check his phone, see if he had missed anything while he was down there without any signal.
