Chapter Twelve

The ringing of her phone made Audrey jerk awake, blinking around in confusion. Her surroundings were unfamiliar, definitely not her bedroom or the office, but somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that she'd been in this place before. Her phone chirped again and she reached over, grabbing it off of the worn wooden side table. "Parker," she answered briskly.

"Hey Audrey," Julia Carr's voice responded. "I was told to call you as soon as we got the ID on this guy."

"What did you find out?" Audrey asked, immediately sitting upright. The nerves rushed in and chased away the last of the grogginess.

"His name's Michael Stauffer, 34," Julia recited. "Cause of death wasn't drowning though. Looks like cardiac arrest by the damage to his heart. There was no trace of edema, so he was definitely dead before he was put in the water. Probably died and then someone dumped him in the ocean to get rid of the body."

"So we think murder?" Audrey asked suspiciously.

"Well either murder or this guy had a heart attack and fell off his boat," Julia offered hopefully. "But considering this is Haven, I honestly couldn't tell you. There was also some faint bruising around his bicep, might be from an attacker."

Audrey sighed and nodded. "Anything else you can tell me about him? Give me a place to start asking questions?"

"He was an orderly at the Haven Regional, if that helps," Julia said. "Other than that, he's unmarried and has no roommates or family in the area. According to his records, he's pretty new to town himself."

"Alright, thanks Julia," Audrey said and then hung up. She looked around and this time her location finally clicked. It was Duke's cabin and she was tucked into the bed. That's why it seemed distantly familiar, because she'd been in this same position before. Only at least this time she wasn't naked.

Climbing out of the bed, she walked out onto the deck. Duke was sitting in his same little orange loveseat where they'd been last night, his legs propped up on a rickety table and a newspaper covered in Asian script in his lap. Again, eerily like the first time they'd met. Duke appeared to be half-conscious and she wondered if he had slept at all last night. When she came closer he started and then looked up at her.

"Any news?" he asked in lieu of a greeting.

"We got a name for the guy you found," Audrey said. "An orderly up at the hospital. He wasn't drowned either, he was killed and then dumped."

Duke nodded thoughtfully. "Does that connect him to Nathan any way?"

"Not that I can think of," Audrey admitted and dragged a hand through her hair wearily. "Nathan and I were at the hospital the afternoon before he disappeared, but I don't recognize the guy. The only person we talked to there was a female nurse. But still, it's a start. I'm going to go make a call."

Audrey stepped out onto the dock where she had better phone service. The number for the Haven Regional hospital was one that she had become unfortunately familiar with since coming to town. It rang twice before someone picked up.

"Haven Regional hospital, how may I direct your call?" a bored-sounding woman drawled into the phone.

"This is Detective Parker with the Haven PD," Audrey said and tried to inject more power into her voice than she actually felt. After all, if she couldn't even keep her own partner safe, what authority did she really have? "I need the files on one of your employees."

The woman on the other end gave a nervous hum. "Well you'd need to talk to Mr. Egris in personnel, and he's not in until seven."

"Is there anyone else who can help me?" Audrey asked impatiently. "This is urgent police business."

"Sorry officer," the woman said. "The only ones with the ability to access employee files are the hospital administrators, and none of them are here before seven. But if you want, I can put you through to his voice machine, and he'll get the message as soon as he gets in."

Audrey sighed irritably but gave the okay. There was a click, a dial tone, and then a man's voice said, "This is Bud Egris. I'm not in my office right now, but leave a message and I will try to get back to you."

"Mr. Egris, this is Detective Audrey Parker with Haven PD," Audrey rattled off. "I need copies of your files for an employee, an orderly named Michael Stauffer. Have them sent to the station please. Thanks for your cooperation," she added as an afterthought, trying to soften the command slightly.

With that done she stuffed the phone back into her pocket and went back to join Duke. She sat down next to him on the loveseat, and when he offered her a cup of his herbal tea she accepted it gratefully. She wasn't much of a tea drinker usually, but she'd take anything that might help her stay awake and clear her head.

"Nothing good I take it?" Duke asked.

"Not until seven o'clock," Audrey said, not able to keep the bitterness entirely from her voice. "That's when all of the hospital big-wigs finally get into the office to help."

Duke frowned into his tea. "Can't you just demand it? March in there and make them let you into their files or something?"

Audrey chuckled dryly. "You watch too many cop shows," she informed him. "Besides, I can't do that without a judge's warrant, and he's never out of bed before nine." Duke furrowed his brow. "Not everyone in Haven is down with greeting the day quite as early as you do, Buddha boy."

This finally managed to coax a small smile out of Duke. "Not hard to get up early when you don't go to sleep to begin with," he said offhandedly. "I couldn't sleep to save my life last night. Too much in my head, I guess."

"Thoughts in your head?" Audrey asked sarcastically. "That's a rarity."

"Tell me about it," Duke agreed unashamedly. "I really prefer just going along as things happen instead of all of this thinking and wondering. Not to mention I've now seen enough bodies floating in the water to fuel nightmares for the rest of my life."

Audrey nodded in understanding. She didn't even want to think about all of the horrifically destroyed bodies that she'd seen in all of her years of law enforcement. They had a tendency to creep up into her dreams whenever she was stressed and haunted her, reminding her of the victims that she hadn't been able to save. She didn't want to even think about adding Nathan to that group. No, she would save him. She had to.

"I can't just sit here and wait," she said suddenly, standing up and fidgeting. She needed to be moving, needed to feel like she was accomplishing something. "I'm going to go up to the morgue and talk to Julia some more about this, see if I can find anything that might give me a clue."

"Okay," Duke said and he stood up too. When she walked out onto the dock again he followed her, but she didn't say anything to stop him. Even if she knew he wouldn't be that much help with the case, she wouldn't turn away his company. The gaping hole left behind by Nathan's absence was making her feel weak and vulnerable. Having Duke fill the spot for just a while was equally unsettling and reassuring.

The steady purr of Nathan's old Bronco was the only noise between them as they drove toward the morgue. Duke was stiff and uncomfortable in the passenger seat, his eyes heavy as he stared out the windscreen. She could tell that he hadn't slept much, if at all, and she wondered how long they both could go before they'd collapse. Audrey told herself she only needed to keep going until she found Nathan. She would find Nathan and get him home safely, and then she would sleep for a week straight, curled up next to him so she could make sure he wouldn't disappear again. She'd handcuff them together if she had to.

The morgue was a separate smaller building set behind the hospital. Audrey and Duke walked in to find Julia standing over a pale body, a scalpel in hand as she worked on an autopsy. She didn't look surprised to see them, just kept working. "This definitely wasn't an accident," she said, her gloved fingers probing through the opening in the man's chest. "I was going to call you as soon as I finished here. This man was killed very deliberately."

"You've found more then?" Audrey asked, walking into the autopsy room. Duke followed behind her hesitantly.

"I've given him a more thorough investigation and it's turned up a lot of minor bruising I missed at first glance," Julia said through the paper mask on her face. "Most of it is post-mortem, probably from his swim in the ocean, but there is some peri-mortem bruising as well. Specifically, a pretty sizeable blow to the back of the head, right at the base of the skull."

"So he was knocked unconscious by someone," Audrey concluded and Julia nodded.

"And then there's this," she said and twisted the man's arm so the inside of his elbow was visible. There was faintly green bruising inside of it, and in the centre of that was a pinprick hole right above the blue-tinged vein.

"A needle?" Audrey asked. "He was injected with something."

"I thought maybe it was drugs at first, an OD would explain the heart damage, but the tox screen came back completely clean," Julia said. "I've looked closer at his heart now and found out what it was that made it stop; an overflow of oxygen in the chambers."

"Someone injected oxygen into his veins," Audrey said, awed at the realization.

"Putting all of the pieces together, it looks like someone jumped him and knocked him out with a blow to the head," Julia explained. "And then after that they injected him with a syringe full of air. Once his heart had stopped, they dumped him in the water to get rid of him."

"This isn't just a random crime then," Audrey said. "This was planned out, methodical. For some reason someone really wanted to make sure that this guy was out of the way."

"Maybe they just wanted his pretty pink scrubs," Duke chipped in sarcastically, looking anywhere but at the body.

"It is a little weird that his clothes are missing," Julia agreed. "Usually that means a sexual assault case but there's no damage to converge with that."

Audrey's eyes suddenly widened. "No, Duke's right," she said.

"I am?" Duke asked in surprise.

"They wanted his work uniform," Audrey said. "And his ID card. With them someone could've gotten into the hospital without alerting any attention. No one pays much attention to the orderlies. They are free to move around the hospital, and with the right clothes and an ID badge he could get in and do whatever he needed without anyone being the wiser."

"But why?" Julia asked. "What's the point of being able to get into a hospital?"

"Nathan and I were at the hospital the afternoon before he was taken," Audrey said. "We were up there for the police blood drive." She looked down at the man on the table and then back up at Julia. "Do you have a time of death?"

"I can't be one-hundred-percent sure, the cold water would've preserved his body better, but I would say he's probably been dead about two days, maybe three," Julia said.

"Which means this guy was dead before Nathan was taken," Audrey said. "So whoever killed this guy could've been in the hospital the same time we were there."

"Why though?" Duke said. "What's the point of all the sneaking?"

"I don't know yet," Audrey said but none of the spark had gone from her eyes. She was positive that this was a clue, a connection, and she wasn't going to rest until she found out what it meant. "This guy's been one step ahead of us from the beginning. I think it's time we get ahead of him. C'mon Duke, we're going to sit up there in the administration office until they get there. We need that file and we need it now. We need to find out the last time that Michael Stauffer's ID card was used to check into the hospital, because I'm betting it was after he died."