A few days later, considering all that was mentioned in the meeting, in Bailestown, Maurice and Frank made their way to the hospital.
"Sadly, we can't have you stay for too long. Her condition is fluctuating, and the additional stress of the police present won't help her," the head nurse explained.
"We just want to find out what happened the night we saw her. We won't take long," Frank replied.
The nurse continued ahead, showing the officers Emily's room. With a gentle knock, she was the first to come in. "Hey, Emily, how are we doing today?"
When Frank came in next, his stomach dropped at the sight of the woman. She was pale, her lips a light purple colour. She carried small bags under her eyes, as one side of her neck, the one which contained the bite, was patched with a big bandage.
"I'm... okay, I suppose..." she replied, gently crossing her brows as if she felt some pain in her body.
"We'll keep a closer eye on you then," the head nurse said. "I have some guests for you. The two police officers who saw you a few nights ago."
Looking at both Frank and Maurice, they could see it took her a second to remember. And once she did, she let a small smile grow on her lips. "They saved me."
"Yes. Yes, they did," the nurse replied. "I'll leave them with you for a bit. But if you want to call me, press that button by the side of the bed."
Emily nodded her head.
"We won't take long, especially after seeing how weak she looks," Frank muttered to the nurse, hoping his words came across as some reassurance. She nodded her head.
With her leaving the room, and with the two officers moving closer to the woman in bed, they pulled a chair closer to her before taking a seat.
"What can I help with?" Her voice sounded weak, worn out. It caused Frank's heart to sink ever so slightly.
"We won't take long, Ms Harpe... We just wanted to ask you a thing or two more about what happened at the petrol station," Frank said.
She furrowed her brows slightly, confusion present on her face. "But... I've told everything I knew... Haven't I?"
"This is for our own record, Ms Harpe," Maurice said next, leaning forward as he anchored his elbows against his legs. "But if you can't, we completely understand. We just thought to give you a quick visit and get a few more details from you, personally."
"I-... Well... Let me... Let me think. I'll try to think over everything I can remember..." she said. And then, as if moving to sit up, she crossed her brows again in pain.
"Ms Harpe?" Frank called out. "Are you alright?"
"Please, can you help me, dear?... I'm trying to sit up."
"Of course, of course."
Helping her sit upright, her back against the pillow, she let out a gentle sigh of relief. "That's much better... Thank you, Officer."
"Are you okay now, Ms Harpe?"
She merely nodded her head. "Now... Where were we..." she continued a moment later. "That was a horrible night... I try not to think back to it..." She looked at Frank. "What angers me is how... it all happened so fast! Maybe, had I gone to the station a bit earlier, I'd have been able to... to save him. He'd be alive, and well, he'd be with me right now."
Her words caused Frank's heart to further sink toward the pit of his stomach. "I can't imagine how you must feel, Ms Harpe. I'm so sorry for your loss again."
She simply nodded her head, letting her eyes fill with tears once more. "Anyway... My sulking and crying weren't the reason why you're both here. I'll try to make this short. I can only imagine how busy you both must be."
"Please, take your time, Ms Harpe," Maurice began. "We're in no rush; however, we also don't want to stress you out too much with our visit. I can only imagine what it must feel like to regurgitate information from a traumatic night like that."
Again, she nodded her head. "Where would you like me to begin?"
"Maybe from a little before you got attacked? I suppose the moments leading up to your attack could hold some key information," Frank suggested, Maurice nodding his head. "We're looking to see if there was anything or anyone suspicious in your vicinity. Especially considering that whoever attacked you could also be your husband's killer."
But just as Frank said that, Emily furrowed her brows. He noticed this, prompting him to ask, "Is everything alright?"
"Yeah, it's just..." Emily started. "There was more than one person in there, Officer."
Frank's face went pale. "More than one?"
"Yeah. About two or three. And the stench was awful." Her face creased ever so slightly, as if she remembered the exact scent. "I've never experienced the smell of death, but at that moment, I knew it was something close to it."
Frank glanced at Maurice, who was jotting down everything that Emily told them. "And... Tell us. Do you remember what these people looked like?"
She merely pursed her lips, shaking her head a moment later. "I'm sorry, I don't. It was a bit too dark for me to fully see. But, there was something I couldn't help notice. How pale their skin was... And one of them seemed to have... like a hole in their cheek? But I might not have seen it right. As I said, it was quite dark in there."
"No worries, in any way, at least we have something to go by," Maurice replied. "And just to ask you again, you were attacked when you went into the petrol station, is that right?"
"Yes, Officer... That's correct."
"So, putrid smell, pale appearance and seeming to have wounds, that's what the suspected individuals had in common..."
Emily nodded her head. "From what I've seen, yes. That's correct. Officer. But again, it was dark in the station, so take my words with a pinch of salt." Taking a moment to breathe, she continued, "They also sounded like they were drunk, or high. Perhaps both."
Furrowing his brows, Frank inquired, "Sounded? What do you mean by that?"
"There was this sort of a... Rasp? Something between a groan, maybe even a grunt. I managed to hear a hiss also. Gives me more of a reason to assume that they were intoxicated."
Frank nodded his head. "Thank you for that, Ms Harpe."
"Of course... I think... I think that's all I can remember. I rushed out of there as fast as I could, and that's where I came across you both."
Finishing the sentence in his notebook, Maurice clicked the top of his pen before anchoring it to a page in the notebook. "Thank you very much, Ms Harpe. We're so sorry to have disturbed you in such a state. But this helped us immensely."
"We wish you a speedy recovery," Frank added, standing up alongside Maurice.
"Thank you. I'm glad I could have been of help," she replied. "But it just makes me curious again... I gave a statement to the officers who came here with me, to the hospital."
"Like we said before, Ms Harpe. We wanted to take an account from you, personally," Frank started. "We also did it as... Well, there were a few cases brought to our attention, and they reminded us of what had happened to you."
"Other people got attacked in the same way?"
Frank merely nodded his head. "Attacked and bitten."
"At first, since all the victims we've encountered were women, we thought it was something to do with gender... That the attackers were motivated by gender," Maurice elaborated.
"Well, I'll tell you right now that intuition is no good. They got me, and they got my husband. Hell, they killed him. From the attack, I don't think they care whether someone is a man or a woman. If someone is in their line of sight, they'll get them anyway they can," Emily said. It was those exact words that caused a chill to course through Frank's body.
"I'll be sure to write that in too," Maurice replied, grabbing back his notepad and pen before scribbling down the new information. With that done, and with him putting the notebook back into the pocket of his jacket, Maurice tapped Frank gently before nodding his head to the door. "Thank you again for your time, Ms Harpe."
"As I said earlier, I'm glad I could have been of help... And I sure hope you'll find the culprits for this atrocity that's spreading."
"I can reassure you that we'll do just that, Ms Harpe. We'll work hard until justice is served," Frank said. "But, for now, we'll leave you to rest..."
"Thank you, Officer Fallon..." she began, at first, looking down at her hands, intertwined. "Both you and Officer Peters helped me..."
Frank couldn't help but smile at her words, "You're very welcome, Ms Harpe... We're only doing our job."
Leaving the room, Maurice turned to Frank, sympathy present on his face with the way his brows arched up slightly, "The poor woman... I hope she gets better soon."
Frank nodded in agreement. "Yeah, I hope so too. I can't imagine losing someone you love, especially in an incident that could have easily been prevented."
"Yeah," Maurice began. Then, thinking back to everything she said, he couldn't help but narrow his eyes. "The descriptions she gave us. It sounds very strange."
"What? The people at the station?... It sure does. Especially when it comes to the smell."
"We'll check out more about it when we're back in the station," Maurice replied, holding the door open for both himself and Frank as they walked into the reception before leaving the emergency ward, and minutes later, the hospital grounds.
— — —
At his desk, hours later, Frank was typing away on a computer, trying to find any correlation between what they were told in Bailestown and what Emily had mentioned before they left.
There was one lead that Frank spotted. Not too long ago, somewhere in rural Lailin, an investigation was carried out, that of a gruesome homicide. A family farmhouse, allegedly raided. The trespassers murdered the whole family, with only one of the trespassers being killed. The cause of death was a brutal headshot, ruled out by a chunk of the killer's head missing. It was determined that damage like this was most likely caused by a high-powered weapon. An act of self-defence.
Later in the document, the weapon used was identified. A shotgun, which lay by the corpse of one of the family members.
The detail about this investigation that captured Frank's attention was that the attached coronary report suspected that the victims passed away from blood loss.
Inflicted by bite wounds.
And upon the initial examination of the killed trespasser, there was nothing out of the ordinary. The body had decayed, although at a faster rate than the victims. The body had wounds, but the report linked this to decomposition.
Next, the internal organs of the dead were examined. Here was where the coroner's report found something unexpected. Meanwhile, the victims had evidence of dinner eaten before their death, the perpetrator's corpse had evidence of decaying flesh in its stomach. Not just any flesh, human flesh.
Frank found himself having to read the same paragraph twice. "Human meat?" he just about whispered under his breath.
To further add to this claim of human consumption, an arm hair was found lodged between two of the perpetrator's teeth. The coroner assumed it got there as the killer was eating his victims.
Frank felt his stomach turn the more he read through the report. Minimising the tab for a moment, he rubbed his eyes and cheeks with his hands before looking at the blank page lying on a hardback copy next to the keyboard. Pulling it right before him, he grabbed a pen before scribing one singular question.
'Cannibalism??'
Before he could develop his thoughts any further, a knock on the office door caught his attention. It was Maurice.
"We got a call, there's been another attack. This time in a mental asylum morgue."
"A mental asylum morgue?" Frank felt the words themself devour him alive. If there were two places Frank wanted to visit the least, a circus—any circus— held the first place, while a mental asylum was the second. He knew Sileaux had a mental institution, one of the bigger ones in the area, tucked behind an industrial estate. A bit too far for the eye to see.
It was on a road he rarely needed to use. So the fact that he had to go to an asylum, let alone the morgue of the asylum, already made his heart thump against his chest.
"I'll get the car ready," Maurice's voice pulled Frank out of his trance.
Before Frank had the chance to reply, Maurice had already left the office. Leaving him with the last words, bouncing around Frank's mind.
As if Maurice hadn't left, Frank still responded, whispering under his breath, "I'll be out in a moment."
Looking back at the computer, he saved the document to read for some other time and closed every tab on the computer before logging off.
Before leaving, he collected his jacket, which hung on his chair, putting it on as he left the office and headed toward the main door of the police department.
Not even a minute later, he got into Maurice's car before they set off.
For the first little bit of the ride, silence ruled the police car.
Tapping his foot off the floor of the car in nervousness, for the sake of his own sanity, Frank broke the short-lived silence. "Do we have any more information about the call?"
"From what I heard, there's been an attack in the morgue of the institution. And from that alone, I don't want to begin to think what might have gone down in there..."
Frank simply nodded his head.
Looking out the window, as they turned a bend, he saw the mental institute not too far away. It made him gulp without his notice.
"Here goes nothing..."