“Maybe he needed to get off too. Or maybe he’s one of these dead we haven’t ID’d yet.”
“Often there’s more than one medic. So there should have been a first aid medic, like Denny, a doctor, like our missing one, and a third somebody to relieve both of them. Especially when the rig’s manned by almost two hundred individuals on a normal week.”
“Depends on the crew,” he said. “You and I have both been places where anybody who was a paramedic or an EMT could have had enough training for what they needed here. A helicopter would have taken off with anybody who had a serious injury, as soon as he was stabilized enough to survive the flight anyway. It’s not like they would be doing surgeries here.”
After a thorough check of the place, and still none the wiser, they unlocked the door and stepped out. Only to come face-to-face with Winslow.
He glared at them, his hands on his hips. “What the hell are you two skulking around here for?”
“We were looking to see who locked your friend in the freezer,” Troy said immediately.
He fell back a step. “You’re the ones who let him out. Maybe you’re the ones who locked him in?”
“Well, maybe,” Axel said. “But, if I were you, I wouldn’t go down that pathway though because you’re wrong. We opened it up.”
His face fell a little bit. “Something strange is going on here,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s getting dangerous.”
“It sure is,” Troy said. “For a start, seven bodies are in that cooler.”
He looked at him, looked at the cooler, and said, “What are you talking about?”
“In the morgue, a temporary morgue,” he said, “are seven dead bodies.”
“No, there should be two,” Winslow said. “Just the two. One of the guys was blasted off the side. His face was slammed into the column of the steel walls there, and that killed him. The other one, his neck was broken from the fall.”
“Well, I get that,” Troy said. “Except we were told that you had no fatalities and that four were missing. Still your version accounts for two of the dead, but what about the other six?”
“What six?” He looked at Troy in horror and rushed past them toward the morgue room. As they watched, he opened it up and cried out when he saw the body bags. He looked back at them. “Help me open these up,” he said. “I want to see who these people are.”
With his assistance, all seven body bags were opened. He confirmed the two killed in the blast two days ago, Roger and Clarence; and then he stopped and tapped the next one. “This is our doc,” he said. “Jesus Christ, what the hell’s going on here?” After he ID’d each of the three managers, he then opened the last one, and he shook his head. “This one’s just a kid. He was Daniel’s brother’s buddy.”
“Yeah,” he said, “and where is the brother?”
“He’s missing.” Winslow looked at him. “Remember? Four are missing.” And then he stopped and shook his head. “Wait. But three of the dead are some of those missing. And Lionel was the fourth person missing too.”
“Who is this guy? The brother’s friend, right?”
“This is Charlie. Him and Daniel’s brother, Lionel, they were really good friends.”
“How good of a friend?”
Winslow looked at him and glared. “I don’t give a shit what the kid’s sexuality was,” he said. “As long as he did his job, that was good enough for me.”
“I get that and commend you for it,” Troy said. “But, the fact of the matter is, not everybody might have had that attitude.”
He slowly stepped back, looked at him, and said, “Are you saying somebody killed these men?”
“Are you telling us that they died in the blast?”
He looked down and shook his head. “No, there’s no way.”
“So, how can you possibly not think that somebody killed these men?”
He leaned back against the side, his face pale. He was clearly shaken. “Two of these I knew about, Roger and Clarence, from the blast a couple days ago, although I don’t know if a report was sent in on them yet. You’ve got to realize we have little communication here now, and that’s hardly been our priority,” he said. “But Doc and Charlie? When did that happen? Now the three managers—Stedman and Doug and Pete—were reported as missing, yet they are part of the dead here too. The only one still missing then is Lionel, Daniel’s brother.”
“He’s in the last body bag we found. So is anyone truly missing then?” Axel asked. “Because it sounds to me like all are dead, and something really fishy is going on.”
“You think?” he said. “Jesus, we have to get security in on this.”
“You’re kidding, right? No security is here anymore. The cameras are down throughout half the place, and the whole place is collapsing in on itself. Remember?”
“I remember,” he said. “And I remember that you guys were brought in after the fact. And you’re the ones who are involved in all this shit now. For all I know, you’re the ones who killed these men.”
“Right, so we arrived late—after you had four missing people and two killed in the blast—but we killed three of them somehow, finding them in the dark during this storm and killed them and stuck them into the refrigerator?” Troy stared at him in disbelief. “Get your head on straight, man. Somebody here on this damn rig has gone rogue. Or was rogue already and got the hell off before anybody found out what he’d done.”
Almost pathetically grateful, Winslow grabbed at that straw. “That must have been what happened,” he said. “Maybe he found these people and then heard one more spot was left on the last flight out, and he grabbed it.”
“And didn’t say anything to anybody?”
“Hell, I wouldn’t,” Winslow said. “People would probably misconstrue everything. Look at you guys.”
“What do you mean, ‘look at you guys?’” Troy snapped. “It’s not like you didn’t immediately turn and blame us.”
“True,” he said. “Jesus, I wish Lionel was here though. It would make Daniel feel a lot better.”
“His brother?”
“Yeah, his brother.”
“We haven’t seen Daniel in the last hour or so. Have you?”
He looked at him in surprise, then frowned and shook his head. “He’s with the company men, isn’t he?”
“I don’t think so,” Troy said, “but I’m not exactly sure.”
“Well, he better be,” Winslow said. “Otherwise, that’s just even more that’s messed up.”
“Apparently this whole place is a mess. Chucky needs you too,” Axel said quietly.
Winslow pulled away from the morgue drawers and said, “Yes, he does. That’s what I’ll focus on.”
“So, just because we don’t know what the hell’s going on here, don’t mention anything about the extra bodies.”
He frowned at that. “I don’t keep secrets from my buddy.”