“Maybe nothing,” Troy said. “We’ve got a lot of ideas and pieces of things to consider here that don’t appear to be necessarily connected. But what we do know is that we have three rapes, eight dead bodies still on the rig because God himself is the only one who knows what’s happened to Lionel, and then we’ve got C-4 taken from a military base.”
“Not to mention the sabotage of the rig itself,” Chucky said. “That’s the big one.”
It really hurt her to think along those lines because those three women would never be the same, yet their shattered psyches and dashed hopes in a just humanity ran second to the damage to the rig—more a case of money out of the shareholders’ pockets—though it could have been much worse and there could have been several hundred deaths.
“I’m going back to bed,” Chucky said.
“Good idea,” she said and headed out toward the hallway as if heading to hers. Troy grabbed her and tugged her up against him, as they watched Chucky disappear into the darkness. With his arms wrapped around her, he leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Do you know where the dead men’s rooms are?”
“No, but I can find out.” She pulled up her phone, logged into the system, and checked for the rooms assigned to them. “I have it here,” she said, “but chances are they’ll be locked.”
“No problem,” he said smoothly. “Take me to them.”
She quickly led him toward the sleeping quarters and stopped to point out the rooms provided to the four now-dead supervisors. “The three guys should be here, and the doctor, as the fourth supervisor, had his own room along here too.”
Troy stepped into the first room. It was unlocked, and it had already been cleaned out. He looked at her. “It’s completely empty.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what to say.”
He checked the second one, but it was locked. He popped the lock in seconds and stepped in. “This should be one of the managing supervisor’s room,” she said.
He tossed the entire room within seconds, checking under the mattresses, through each layer of the sheets, and then went to the closet and pulled out personal gear, looking for anything that might show some evidence that he’d been involved in anything criminal. They should have done that first when they realized who the bodies were.
With her help, they found his cell phone tucked inside his pillow, among the padding there.
“Why would his cell phone be here?” he asked out loud.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Normally you would think it would be in his pocket.”
“But he didn’t have it on him, so that meant he was here, maybe in his room, when it happened.” He pulled out the cell phone and said, “And it’s not locked.” He quickly checked through it.
“We can also log in to his online account,” she said, “but I highly doubt he would do anything company-wise.”
“No, most of the time people save that stuff in the cloud.” As he went through the emails, he found a folder and opened it. And then he sucked in his breath. He quickly scrolled the photo up slightly.
“Berkley, do you recognize her?”
Berkley stepped over and nodded. “It’s one of the first two women who were raped.”
He let her see the rest of the picture, which showed the woman unconscious on the ground, completely nude, obviously beaten, and male hands were on her.
She immediately clamped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.
He nodded. “We need to get this to the authorities.”
“This makes it look like somebody was getting revenge by sharing these photos,” she said. She shook her head. “This guy is a complete asshole, but these women haven’t been here for weeks if not months now.”
“Well, we’ll have to check the timelines to see who was here during the attacks.”
“Well, we need to find out what their alibis are for sure,” she agreed. As he went through the pictures, she winced to see the women in various positions. “At least in this case, she’s unconscious,” she said.
He scanned through them and then stopped. “What about this woman?”
She looked at it and said, “That’s the second woman.”
He nodded and went through them, and finally he said, “I’m not seeing a third woman.”
She could feel a sense of relief inside. “I hope not,” she said. “I think it would absolutely finish Tabitha to think there were photos of her too. She didn’t say anything about being photographed at the time though.”
“I doubt if she knew,” he said. “Remember? She was blindfolded. And these two weren’t, which is interesting.”
“That was probably an added development,” she said caustically.
He slipped the phone into his pocket and quickly searched the rest of the room. But he didn’t find anything. He said, “So one of the managers’ possessions have been searched, and one manager’s room had been gutted, so what else have you got for me?”
She noted that one of the managers had his room nearby but that the doc’s room was coming up next.
Troy nodded. “Let’s check the doc’s room next, then the other guy’s.”
They went to the doctor’s personal quarters. It was larger than the others, but, even though they went from top to bottom, there didn’t appear to be anything to see.
“What about his phone,” she wondered.
“I wonder if it’s still on him,” he said. “You know what? If you find a body—like me, for instance—you’ll find my phone on me,” he said.
She groaned. “I really don’t want to go back down there.”
“What room was the final managing supervisor in?”
She nodded and went back to her database. “I just have his initial assigned room. He had asked for a room reassignment, but it doesn’t say what room he was given.”
They stepped out into the hallway, and Troy checked the room directly across the hall. It was full of gear. “Do you know whose room this is?”
She checked the roster. “It says it’s supposed to be empty.”
“What do you want to bet that this was a manager’s lair? It’s a decent size too.” He quickly went through the stuff and found some personal belongings for a Doug Driscoll.
She nodded. “That is his room then.”
But nothing incriminating was found.
*
Troy led the way back down to the medical clinic.
“Do you really think we’ll find anything here?” she asked, dreading the task ahead.
“Where do you hide stuff if you don’t want somebody to know what it is?”
She looked at him in surprise. “I can’t think of anything I’ve tried to hide.”
He burst out laughing. “That’s because you’ve led a blameless life,” he said with a snicker.
She punched him lightly in the shoulder. “That sounded almost like a criticism,” she said.
“Not at all,” he said with a gentle smile. “Greater to have led your best life than to have led a bad one and then fix it now.”
“I wonder how many bad people try to fix it,” she murmured. She hated the darkness now that it was jet-black outside as well. The angry sea raged outside, with spray coming up every time they had to go outside a door and go back down again.