“Yes, of course,” she says as she rushes off to retrieve it. She hands me the map, and I grab a permanent marker so I can start putting X’s on the map where the cameras are. They have quite a few cameras, so how was it that they didn’t catch anything?
“One there you missed,” Gabriel comments as he indicates it.
I cross it off and hesitate because this means at least one camera would have caught something.
“You’re sure none of the cameras caught anything on this floor?” I ask.
“Someone from security is headed here,” the nurse says before looking to the side. “That’s Breanna right there.”
The approaching woman gives us a nod, and before she can say anything, I hold up the map. “Which of the cameras is down?”
“This one,” Breanna says as she points at it.
“How could someone who doesn’t work security tell that?” I ask, heading that way while Gabriel and Breanna follow me.
She shakes her head. “I’m… not sure. There are no lights on the camera, so I guess they had to have seen inside the security room at some point. I feel like that’d be the best way to quickly know.”
“Is that easy to do?”
“Sometimes we keep lost items back there, depending on the area where they lost them. Our security room is based in the main hospital, so anything that’s lost in that area generally goes there. Someone could have seen that the camera was down when they collected an item, but… it seems unlikely that anyone could figure exactly which camera it is, you know?”
“Detective Hyde and I met the man who introduced himself as her brother. I was told her brother visited often. I want to know if the man we met, who wasn’t her brother, is the same person the staff came in contact with. Let’s get a still of him to share with the security guards to have them be on the lookout for him.”
“I can do that,” she says before she reaches out to her team.
I hurry along and stop when I get to the next set of cameras. Gabriel begins marking their spots, but my eyes are alreadyon something that is of interest to me. Would it be of interest to others? That’s questionable, which means that’s where I’m headed next.
“Where are you going?” Gabriel asks as I take off for an employee elevator.
“Did you see something?” the security guard asks.
I reach a door that requires a keycard and gesture at it. “I’d like to go to the first floor.”
Breanna hesitates before nodding. She reaches for her waist before patting her back pocket and pulling the keycard out. “Okay,” she says as she taps her card against it. “Even if they went through the employee doors, there are still cameras and it’s farther from the exit.”
“I don’t think exiting was what they were interested in,” I respond. I get into the elevator where Gabriel kneels down, having taken note of something when I’d been too fixated on waiting for the doors to open.
“There’s a drop of blood on the floor. Please be careful and don’t step on it. We’ll get this checked,” Gabriel says as the elevator reaches the first floor and the door opens. He calls someone over to watch the elevator until a tech can acquire the blood and have it checked.
“I want in here,” I say, pointing at a door.
Breanna looks confused by the request. “That’s the OR. If they go through there, they end up back at a nurses’ area that’s quite busy even at this time of night.”
“I want to see inside the OR room,” I insist.
The woman seems hesitant at what I’m implying, but she taps her card on the card reader before giving it a look when it doesn’t immediately work. I want to take it from her and press it against the card reader but she’s too busy waving a guy over to borrow his. We’re just wasting unnecessary time becauseof these damn doors being locked. She returns and presses a different card against it.
“Sorry about that,” she says. “I’m not sure why my card wouldn’t work. I have access to all of the doors.”
Gabriel asks, “Has anyone checked these cameras? I’m sure they were assuming whoever took her would be heading out with her, not going into someplace they’d have to turn right back around and leave.”
“I’ll have them check now,” she says as the light on the card reader flashes green. I push the door open and step into the room.
The smell of blood hits me before I look over at Nadine lying on the operating table. Her gown is splayed open, and blood drips off the table onto the ground.
I carefully walk toward her, almost mesmerized by the display. And it very much is a display. This wasn’t someone who was panicked and killed her quickly to silence her. He took his time with it. He enjoyed it as he peeled her torso open and removed what he could, putting the organs on trays by her side.
This is a display.
