"He's this way. In the bedroom," May said, leading the way into the tidy room.
"Let's get him into the ambulance," the lead paramedic said.
In moments, they had him on a stretcher and out the front door. May followed them to the ambulance. She saw Owen was at the garden fence, conversing with the neighbors, explaining what had happened.
"Could you keep an eye on the house until he's home?" she heard Owen say as she passed by.
Reaching the ambulance, May waited anxiously as the paramedic checked Nurse Keyes’ vitals. After a tense minute, he gave her a nod.
"We'll take him straight to the hospital," he said. “It’s likely he’ll be sedated for a few hours. They’ll need to pump out his stomach and probably put him onto some form of life support.”
"Thanks for explaining. I'll be there as soon as I can," May said.
Since she was already in the house, she decided to take a quick look around. Was there anything here that could point the way to murderous activities having taken place?
While Owen and the neighbors were working on a quick repair to the front door, May walked through the house, taking note of what was there.
The house was neat and clean. Too neat? She wondered about that as she quickly paced through the rooms.
There was a map of the area, laid out on the desk in the spare bedroom. That could be a pointer, May thought, although nothing was marked out on it. She looked carefully to see if there was any sign he’d focused on the victim’s addresses but couldn’t see any evidence. No creases, no fingerprint smudges, no pencil marks.
But there, on the dining room table, were some old records from the hospital. This looked to be a personal folder that he himself had kept. May wondered what was in it.
She paged through with gloved fingers, breathing in sharply as she saw that the nurse had copied some of the ICU records.
Would Hayley's and Alicia's be among them?
May narrowed her eyes as she saw that they were. Both sets of records were among the pages within this folder. Records that contained patient information, address details, and other information that was surely confidential, and could have been used to track down his chosen victims.
Feeling a sense of purpose that they were now pursuing the right suspect, May photographed the folder and the relevant pages. Then, she bagged the entire folder, to be used as evidence when the case was prepared.
"Are you done there, May?" Owen asked.
"Yes, I'm done."
Holding her evidence bags tightly, she walked back through the house to the front door, which was now able to be closed fully once more.
“I’ve got his car license plate,” Owen said, pointing to the garage. “We can use it to track his movements, hopefully.”
"Let's go to the hospital," she told Owen. "We can work on tracking his movements while he’s being treated, but we need to be there when Nurse Keyes wakes up. There's no time to waste in questioning him. Not with such incriminating evidence. We need to pin him down on dates and times and hopefully make a formal arrest."
CHAPTER TWENTY
May drove back to the hospital quickly, with Owen already compiling a checklist of what they needed to do. It was late at night, and that might make their job more difficult, but the most important task was to try and track the nurse’s movements.
What had Nurse Keyes been doing in the past few days, and where had he been going?
They needed, if possible, to tie his movements in with the crimes. If so, they might have a match on dates and times of when the victims were killed.
That would seal the deal.
Owen was already contacting the hospital to make sure that they allowed them to speak to him as soon as he had awoken in ICU.
"It's an urgent police matter. We want to be notified the moment that he wakes up," he told the hospital. "We'll be there in a few minutes. Is there a waiting room near his ward that we can use?"
He waited, listened. Then he nodded. "Thank you," he said.
He cut the call and turned to May. "There's a small waiting room next to the ICU ward that we'll be able to use. We can wait there for as long as it takes. We need to make sure that this man doesn't just walk out of the hospital when he wakes up. He might be looking to try again with another murder, or another suicide attempt, and he's going to learn pretty soon that we caught up with him. Then, he might also try to flee the area."