CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
There was always something creepy about factories. Maybe it was the fact that Laura only ever visited them in the course of investigating a murder – and that so many of them, when they were no longer in use, seemed to end up being the venue for body disposal. Whatever it was, it gave her the chills, and she felt them trailing down her spine now as they looked up at Mannequin Supply Limited’s manufacturing site.
“It looks creepy,” Detective Thorson piped up from the back seat, and Laura stifled a smile. At least she wasn’t the only one. In fact, she was glad in more ways than one to have Thorson with them again – it felt like backup might be needed when they were looking for what had seemed a whole army in her vision. If the space was as big as she’d thought, they couldn’t spare one of them to check the employee rosters and one to search. They needed more hands on deck.
“Oh, look,” Nate said, gesturing to the front doors of the space – massive double doors which were set open as if to allow a vehicle inside. There was a man just walking out of them, dressed in worn blue coveralls and wearing a hard hat. Laura had to guess, as she knew Nate had, that it was the man they’d been told would meet them.
She got out of the car and went right towards him, Nate and Detective Thorson not far behind her. She lifted her hand in greeting as she got closer. “Hello. Special Agent Frost – are you the foreman?”
“That’s right,” he nodded. “Head office gave me a call and said you were on the way over here. Something about needing me to show you around the place?”
“That’s right,” Nate nodded, having caught up. “We’ll need you to answer some questions, too. And we need your employee records. Actually, if we could start there, it could save us some time.”
“Certainly,” the foreman nodded. “We have our roster set up in the office. I can show you all of our staff, past and present.”
“That sounds like my cue,” Detective Thorson said, glancing at Nate and Laura for their nodded confirmation. “If you could show me to the office and the records, I can start checking through them with my colleagues back in the precinct over the phone while you show the agents around.”
The foreman nodded with an expression that suggested it was a fair idea. He turned and yelled something over his shoulder – the words were lost to Laura as they walked inside the large open space, into the cacophony of the factory proper. She noticed that most of the workers were wearing ear defenders, quite possibly a smart move that they should have copied – but then again, she had no time for safety precautions when there was a serial killer out there and the day was coming to a close. Already, she could see people packing up their stations and starting to clock off for the day.
It felt like time was slipping through their fingers. If their killer was one of the workers here, and he left to go home before they realized it, they would be chasing after him. As it was, there may have been a ticking clock hanging over Laura’s head with a sword attached to the pendulum, ready to drop on her. Sooner or later they would get a call that another victim had been found, and she would know that they had failed one more person.
At least, she hoped it would only be one.
“Alright,” the foreman said, after a brief word with one of his colleagues who then took Detective Thorson over to a set of stairs leading high up above the factory floor. “It’s a tour you wanted, then?”
“Yes,” Laura said. “We need to understand more about these mannequins than we do now. Firstly, about the types that you make. We’ve seen a few lately – ones with faces, ones without, standing and sitting ones…”
“Oh, yes,” the foreman nodded vigorously. “We make all of those. Different molds for different customers, you see.” He gestured over towards an area behind a plastic wall, where a supervisor wearing both ear and eye defenders was keeping close watch on a robotic arm tipping what appeared to be molten plastic into set molds – one for each side of a body. As they watched, the molds went through some kind of drying process and were cast off the other end of a conveyer belt to be collected and moved to another station. There, the two halves were made into one whole, sealed together.
Nate lifted up his cell phone. On the front was an image of the mannequins from the crime scenes – removed from the place where they had been found, simply propped up alone as part of the forensic examination. “Do you make ones like these?”
“Yes. That looks like one of ours,” the foreman said, furrowing his brow as he considered the photograph seriously. “We make a lot of those. It’s our cheaper model. We don’t have to spray on the faces like we do with the others.” He pointed to one of the other assembly lines, where a crew of workers were bent over examining the results of the work created by another robotic arm – one that appeared to be spraying ink.
“Is it all done by machine?” Nate asked, curiosity in his voice.
“Yes, these days,” the foreman said with a sigh. “When I started out here forty years ago, it was different. You had artists to paint the faces. It wasn’t well-paid work, still, but it was skilled. And we’d spend hours putting each one together. Now they’re made in minutes by the machines. Still, I guess that’s progress.”
“Was there anyone you remember who worked on painting the faces and then lost their job with the innovations?” Nate asked. “Maybe someone who ended up struggling, or felt like they really lost their vocation?”
Laura’s eyebrow lifted, seeing where he was going with it. A former employee who felt like these new, faceless, robot-made mannequins had stolen his livelihood, made his skills useless. That kind of thing was definitely enough to drive someone to the brink. If they already had the kind of personality that was susceptible to violence or psychotic behavior, then it would be easy to see that loss pushing them over.
The foreman shrugged. “A few, sure. You want me to make sure those get added to your list of staff to look into?”
Laura nodded. “That would be fantastic. I think we’ve seen enough here to get an idea of it all. Except for one thing.” She’d been thinking it from the moment they stepped outside: the big, empty space of the factory reminded her of her vision. Clearly, this space was filled with machinery, but she could see what the potential connection might be. “Can we see your storage facility, where the mannequins are kept?”
“Ah, that’s off-site,” the foreman said over his shoulder, leading them towards the stairs. “We have a separate storage facility where we keep all the mannequins that haven’t been pre-sold to customers. We have a certain amount of orders to fulfil on a regular basis – large chain stores, for example, who always need to order new ones and replace old or damaged models. The rest just sit in the storage space until they’re sold, so we didn’t have room here at the factory site to keep them all.”
Laura exchanged a glance over her shoulder at Nate as they began to head upwards.
“How many mannequins are kept there?” she asked.
“Oh, it depends on how quickly sales are going,” the foreman said, reaching the top of the stairs and opening a door. “Could be hundreds, could even be as high as thousands. They move in and out as needed.”
“Do you have a way to find out the exact number right now?” Laura passed through the door as he held it open for her, catching sight of Detective Thorson at a desk inside the room with a phone cradled against her chin.
“Not right now,” the foreman said, scratching the growth of stubble on his chin as they all paused near the doorway. “We don’t do a stock take more than every couple of weeks or so. I’d say we’re just about due to get a stock count any day now.”
Laura’s eyes opened wide.