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“What?” Talia asked, watching Welker carefully begin to go through Fleet’s room.
“Quint has a friend who works for an undisclosed federal agency. He says the man can hack into the hospital’s systems, no problem. He also let me know it shouldn’t take very long to get an idea of what happened.”
“That’s good,” Talia breathed just a little bit easier. Any action was good.
“Are you finding anything, Welker?” Mason asked.
“Yeah. I’m not sure if it’s pertinent, but there’s some dirt on the floor with a sneaker pattern imbedded. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been a nurse because the detritus is like, from the woods.” He bent and picked up a clump with his glove-clad hand, giving the lump a little palpation before putting it into a zip-lock baggie.
“See here?” He pointed, giving her, Mason, and Mike a good look at the find. “Leaf matter is involved, which means whoever left it behind had been in the woods. It feels fairly fresh because it still retains a good deal of moisture.”
“So what does that mean?” Talia questioned. “Someone hid in the woods, then came in to steal Fleet away? That doesn’t make sense. As far as I know, Fleet doesn’t have enemies. He has a few bands who have been on his case to speed things up with their studio sessions, but the last thing they’d want to do is kidnap him, because that would put an even bigger crimp in their timetables.”
Mason stuck up his hand. “Let’s wait to see what else we have.”
“I’m bagging up the IV apparatus,” Welker told them. “We’ll send it to the lab and see if anything’s in there that shouldn’t be. Get me a list of the meds that were authorized.”
“On it,” Mike stated, and took off out the door.
Welker went back to his examination, and—
“I may have something else,” Welker said excitedly, then traversed the room rapidly to flick off the light switch.
The room went dark for a moment before Welker turned on his UV light and headed back to the bed, kneeling down. “There’s blood, Mase,” he stated with a grunt. “Small droplets.”
Walking closer, Talia saw the tiny black dots that showed up under the spectrum, on the rail of the bed and on the floor, It could only have come from Fleet’s IV being pulled out.
Welker stood, but remaining stooped, his footsteps took him from the bed, across the room to the door as he carefully examined the egress. “The blood definitely leads out into the corridor.”
Mason, Talia, and Mike were quickly on his heels. “Where does it go from there?” Mason asked.
Welker groused. “I can’t see well enough because the lights in the hallway are too bright. I need them off.”
They spread out, looking for a switch nearby, but none were in evidence.
Welker huffed. “If we can get someone to—”
“On it.” Mason keyed his mic. “Nolan. Are you still with the administrator?”
“That’s an affirmative, Chief,” Nolan replied.
“Tell her we need the hallway lights doused outside Fleet’s room, and the ones in the stairwell adjacent. Have her standby if we need her to kill a few more.”
“Copy that.”
It took a good two minutes—that had Talia fidgeting—but eventually the bank of overheads went out, and Welker reemployed his UV light.
“Got it,” he stated, and began slowly walking toward the exit door at the end of the hallway.
“Wait,” Mason barked, then spoke to Nolan again. “Ask the woman if there’s an alarm on the third-floor exit door at Fleet’s end of the hallway she needs to turn off. And if there is, why didn’t anyone come to investigate if it sounded earlier.
Mike was already at the door with his flashlight out, examining the frame.
“I can tell you why,” he growled. “Somebody disabled it.” He pointed to a big-ass magnet they could now all see, attached to the upper doorframe, along with some very distinct gouges in the metal where it had been forcibly inserted. “They shoved it in here so the connection wasn’t broken when they opened the door,” he said, shaking his head in disgust.
“So, what does this mean?” Talia couldn’t believe it. “That someone stole Fleet away? Because there’s no way he could have done that stuff himself. You understand he was gorped up on drugs and half naked, for God’s sake.”
“We won’t be jumping to any conclusions, Talia. Let’s go at this methodically, as wealwaysdo,” Mason reminded her. He put a hand on her arm to calm her down, but it just ramped her up more, so she shook him off.
