“Get in touch with security,” I say. “Get feeds from every security camera in the place, especially the elevators. We need to find out how Martin got me away from the room and into the morgue. It’s possible he transferred me over to someone. If he came back up here like he always does, he obviously didn’t take the extra time to go to the morgue.”
“I can’t say for sure it was the same amount of time,” Amelia tells me. “I just know I saw him again, and he brought the meals.”
I nod.
“That’s why we need the footage. If we can trace his movements, we might be able to see something that can help us figure out what happened and find Martin. From there, we can find out why he felt the need to skip a couple of steps and put me right into the cold drawer.”
Chapter Two
“Most of the elevators don’t have cameras,” the security officer tells us, pulling up feeds from various sources throughout the building. “Technically, it’s allowed by HIPAA, but a lot of medical facilities choose not to put them in elevators where patients will be for privacy purposes. That’s especially important in places like this where the patients are often public figures. We don’t want someone managing to steal images of a politician or activist in the hospital and releasing it to media sources. But a lot of people, even ones working here, don’t realize there are cameras in certain elevators.”
“Why those?” I ask.
“Some elevators are used only by staff, and those are covered by cameras for security purposes. But not everybody who works here even knows they are there. This is one of them. It’s a back elevator that’s usually used to access the lower portions of the hospital.”
“Like the laundry area,” I say.
“Exactly,” he nods. “Watch.”
The footage is fairly grainy, but I’m able to identify Martin pushing a large laundry cart into the elevator. He pushes the button to go down and stands next to the cart, one hand rested on the edge almost defensively. Staring at the contents of the cart, it just looks like piles of sheets, but I know I’m in there. He’s managed to stuff me inside and cover me up without anyone noticing. After a few seconds, the doors open again, and he steps out. Dragging the cart out, he disappears from the frame.
“Is that it?” I ask.
“Just a second,” the security guard says.
A moment later, the elevator doors open again, and the cart slides back inside, but without Martin. Just as the doors close, I notice something at the very edge of the frame. I lean towards the screen.
“Wait, can you go back a few seconds?”
He stands back, and I stare at the upper corner. I point at something white.
“What’s that?” Sam asks. “Is that a gurney?”
“That’s what it looks like to me,” I say. “It’s waiting right there just outside the elevator. Martin prepared for this. He put the stretcher outside the elevator, knowing he’d be able to bring me down in the laundry cart, then transfer me over. At any step of the way, nobody would question what he was doing. If they saw him with the cart, he was just bringing laundry down. Once I was on the stretcher and covered up, he was just making his way to the morgue. I highly doubt there are many people who will stop an orderly and request a peek at the newly deceased. The only risk of getting caught was when he was actually putting me up on the stretcher.”
“But he’s familiar with that area,” Sam points out. “There are probably routines and schedules in place, so he knows when people will be in that area and when they won’t. If he timed it just right, he could have been down there when he’d have the hallway to himself. Amelia said she was too busy to notice if he was doing anything unusual. If he acted like he was changing the linens in Greg’s room just a few minutes before or after he usually does, nobody would have noticed.”
“Does it show him go back up?” I ask.
The security officer nods. He scans forward by a few minutes, and the elevator doors open back up. Martin steps in with an armful of sheets that he stuffs down into the cart before pushing another button.
“He goes to the floor with the laundry room and brings the cart out. Then he gets back in and heads back up to his usual floor,” he tells me.
“What about after that? How did he get out of the hospital?” I ask.
“The next time he shows up on the camera, it’s about twenty minutes later. Here.” He cues up another piece of film on another area of the screen, showing footage from a different camera. “This is a lobby in one of the other wings of the hospital. If you watch that door...” we follow the screen for a few seconds before seeing the door to the staircase open and Martin step out, “there. He crosses the lobby like nothing’s bothering him and heads out the door. He’s carrying a satchel and a coffee cup, which is no different than the vast majority of the staff you see walking out of this place. Flipping over to one of the security cameras in the parking lot, you see him get into a car. A couple seconds later, the car drives away. That’s all.”
“Let me see the car,” I say. “Maybe I’ll recognize it.”
He pulls up the footage of the parking lot. The tiny figure of Martin comes out of the building and crosses into the rows of parking spots. He goes far into the back, almost out of range of the cameras, then glances around before turning to a car. He walks over to the driver’s side and ducks in. A few seconds later, the car backs out of the spot and drives out of view.
“Do you recognize
