Two weeks since their last stock count. That meant that all of the killings had happened in the time since then. And if they hadn’t checked their stock yet, they wouldn’t have been able to report any thefts. They wouldn’t know about it yet.
She thought of her vision. If she really was seeing the future, then it had to be a future which took place at that storage facility. All of the mannequins set neatly in rows, waiting to be picked up and delivered to their future homes – it made sense. It had to be there.
“Where is this storage facility?” she asked.
“It’s back in city limits,” the foreman said, nodding towards an imagined horizon beyond the walls of the factory. “It backs onto a converted office unit, so it’s pretty cheap even though we’re transporting them around all the time. We even have a deal with a local haulage firm to make sure we keep the costs low.”
“What firm is that?” Laura asked, feeling a certain heaviness in the pit of her stomach, a certainty that she knew what she was about to hear.
“It’s Mariesville Freight,” the foreman shrugged. “Pretty much the only firm around here that can do the job.”
“Where have I heard that before?” Nate muttered.
“That was the company Xavier Perez worked for,” Laura told him in a hushed tone, the magnitude of it now hitting her.
The freight company that Xavier Perez worked for. The storage facility attached to converted offices, which Laura knew in her bones without having to look it up would have to be the site where Dr. Vincent Usipov would have his therapy sessions. The mannequins from the storage facility, taken during a time when there were no stock checks, which had to mean insider knowledge. The killer had to have known about their window for getting away with the theft.
They had to be an employee.
“That’s the last one,” Detective Thorson said, putting down the phone and looking over at them. “None of the employees here has a criminal record. Also, I don’t know how many people this rules out, but – I noticed a schedule on the wall for the last few days.”
She nodded towards it, and Laura moved over, drawn to it as though Thorson had attached her to a string. She read the simple color-blocked schedule and groaned inwardly. There was a block clearly marked OVERTIME FOR ORDER CATCHUP – and the times extended into the evening for over a week of days in the past.
“Who worked these shifts?” she demanded, spinning to look at the foreman.
“Oh, everyone,” he nodded seriously. “No one gets out of it. We had a mess made by one of the machines, ruined an order. Supervisor wasn’t doing his job, and the checkers missed it as well, so everyone was responsible. We split the workforce in half and did alternating days for the overtime.”
“You’re telling me that every single one of your employees has an alibi for either last night or the night before?” Laura said. It strained belief. It felt like every time they were really getting somewhere with this case, some improbable force came along and pushed them three steps back. How could it be possible that they were so close, and yet still not on the right track?
“That’s right,” the foreman said. He frowned, sweeping his hat off his head and rubbing a hand over his forehead. “Yep, I can’t think of any absences. No one left early. You don’t, when you’re on the team. The rest of the guys would never let you forget how you abandoned them during overtime.”
Laura turned to look at Nate with utter disbelief and despair. So, now they were down again without a single suspect. When was this going to end?
But to her surprise, Nate didn’t look that perturbed at all.
“What about at the storage facility?” he asked. “Does your staff roster here include them?”
“No, it doesn’t,” the foreman said. “They’re a separate staff. We’re technically two sister companies under one umbrella, because the warehouse gets used for rentals as well from time to time. So, if you want to know about their staff, you have to talk to the manager over there.”
Laura looked at Thorson and then Nate. They had to see this through. No matter how devastating each new blow was starting to feel, they had to carry on. Somewhere at the end of all this was the answer.
Somewhere at the end of all this, they had to stop a murderer from having the chance to kill again.
“Call the manager,” Laura said, beckoning both her colleagues as she stepped towards the stairwell. “Tell him we’re on the way, and he needs to get his records ready. By the time we arrive, we need to know how many mannequins have been stolen since the last stock check.”
She swept past the foreman and took the stairs two at a time, cursing herself for not thinking to check out the local businesses near the therapist earlier, even though she knew in her heart there had been no need to at the time.
And filled with hope that at last, they might be about to finish this case off with one last nail in the coffin of it all – and pin down the employee who had set all of this in motion.