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“I don’t know.” Maisy sniffed. “He wheeled them out of the room and in the morning, there were more in their place.”
In her opinion, Maisy appear to be well-fed for someone that had been missing for a week. “I assume that your abductor kept you alive for a reason. What was that? Do you know?”
“Yeah, he wanted me to call an artist and make arrangements for him to go and collect a picture out of Broken Wolf Forest.” Maisy shrugged. “I was hungry and he offered me food to do it. I didn’t know he was going to kill her.”
“You knew he was going to kill the baby, didn’t you?” Kane was standing right behind them listening.
“No.” Maisy burst into tears. “He promised he’d let me go free.”
“I’ll call Kalo. Maybe he can locate any old hospital buildings close by.” Kane pulled out his phone. He looked at Carter as he walked toward them. “We’re going to need you to help sort out this mess, especially if we have to stand down. Can you take Jaime to Wolfe’s house and come back?”
“Sure.” Carter looked at Jenna. “Is that okay with you, Jenna? I’ll be at least thirty minutes.”
Trying to process the information that Maisy had given her, Jenna nodded. “Yeah, sure. Did you get anything interesting from the driver of the train?”
“Nope.” Carter shrugged. “He tried to stop, but it was impossible with the number of boxcars he was haulin’. He’s shaken but seems okay. There are two men in the locomotive, both are fine. It was fortunate we didn’t have a derailment. Once this mess is cleaned up, he’ll be able to be on his way if Wolfe considers him fit. It’s not the first time someone drove in front of him.” He indicated to the chopper. “I’ll be back soon.” He ran to the helicopter.
Jenna stood and walked away to where Kane was speaking on his phone to Kalo. “What’s up?”
“Rio was at Aunt Betty’s Café when I called, and Kalo and Duke are with him.” He removed his hat and scraped a hand through his hair. “Rowley is on his way as well. Sandy’s mother is with her and he figured we’d need him here.”
Jenna shook her head slowly. “I should have promoted him years ago.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
It seemed like hours before Wolfe and the others arrived. She dispatched Rio with Maisy Jones as soon as Wolfe had examined her. The disaster and emergency services coordinator had everyone organized and doing their jobs. Wolfe and his team were collecting body parts, and after a time, Wolfe came to her side. She looked at him. “I don’t envy you, your job today.”
“Well, at least I have some good news at last.” Wolfe frowned at her. “The driver was the owner of the truck. The prints match Matthew Oakley, the auto club mechanic out of Winding Alley.” He watched her reaction. “Was he on the suspects’ list?”
Jenna recalled the handsome man who had hit on her at Miller’s Garage. To think he’d ended up in pieces made her stomach churn. He’d been the overconfident, typical type for a psychopath. Overconfident to the end, it seemed. By trying to beat the locomotive, he’d not only killed himself but had taken his secrets to the grave. “Yeah, we interviewed him. He was working at Miller’s Garage.” She raised her eyes to Wolfe. “I wonder what he did with the others.”
“You’ll find them, Jenna.” Wolfe smiled at her and turned back to his team.
She walked over to Kane. “We have an ID: Matthew Oakley, the auto club mechanic. I’m surprised he hit on me. Seems he preferred to play with dead bodies.”
“Yeah, he did stink.” Kane stared at the evidence bags piling up in the back of Wolfe’s van. “I figured it was really rank body odor.”
The FBI chopper landed a few yards away from the Beast. Before the blades had stopped spinning, Jenna, Kane and Duke headed toward it, grabbing Kalo on the way. With Kalo’s information on the local towns, they needed Carter to fly over the ghost town to hunt down an old building that could be a hospital. They climbed inside and he took off. From the air, Jenna could see exactly how much damage had occurred in the trainwreck. Debris was scattered in all directions on both sides of the train. In the distance she made out the outskirts of a dusty old town. The railroad track still existed but had been disconnected from the main line. The chopper circled the town, going back and forth. In her headphone she could hear Carter speaking with Kane.
“That has to be the hospital.”Carter’s voice came through her headset.“Down there on the right. I can drop the chopper in the park opposite. It’s not too far to walk from there.”
Jenna glanced at Kane. “Maisy said he kept the doors locked. How are we going to get inside?”
“They haven’t made a lock I can’t open.”Kane grinned at her.“I’d have made a great thief.”
When the chopper landed, they all climbed out, including the two dogs. Jenna stared along the deserted, dusty sidewalks. The hospital still had the signage out front but some of the windows were broken. Alongside, storefronts still held advertising in the windows. It was as if whoever had been in this town had just walked out and left it to rot. She followed the others across the road and up the front steps to the hospital entrance. To her surprise, the doors swung open easily. Inside was a front counter, behind that, hallways leading in different directions. She turned to Kane. “Which way?”
“I figured from what Maisy said, we should be looking for the operating theaters.” Kane went to a list displayed on a notice board beside a map of the building. “This way.”
As they headed down the passageway, the terrible stench of death greeted them. Mottled light came through the dusty windows but the passageway gave Jenna the creeps and she instinctively reached for her flashlight. The first three rooms they peered into were empty. It was obvious no one had been in there for a very long time. They followed the stench of death and came to a locked door, but outside on a hook was a bunch of keys. “We can’t be that lucky, can we?” She stood to one side as Kane tried each one in the lock.
Inside, they found what Maisy had described: the large tiled room, a line of gurneys against one wall and a small room that looked lived in. They split up and searched every nook and cranny. No bodies. All Jenna found was an old gas generator set up in the middle of the room. She met up with the others in the hallway. “Tell me you found something.”
“The equipment is there, just as Maisy described it.” Jo raised her eyebrows. “It’s a typical embalming set up. I’ve seen similar used by undertakers. They could have had a morgue here at one time and I would say this was some of the equipment that was left behind.”
“One other thing, there is a bath in one of the rooms that’s been used for something, a chemical maybe?” Carter held up an evidence bag. “I’ve taken samples of the residue in the bottom of the tub. Apart from that, we found zip.”
“Same here.” Kane looked all around. “I figure whatever he was doing here he’d finished up before he tried to abduct Cooper. He was probably planning on moving on. I guess we take a look around the outside of the building, just in case he’s buried the corpses.” He turned to Kalo. “Do you recall if there is a crematorium around here anywhere?”
