Decker came back the next day. It took a while to get back to where they had left off but finally he brought Mandy up to speed—that Garth had just gotten her to admit that she had knocked out Adrianna with Pavulon.

Mandy continued the saga.

Once she confessed that Adrianna was still at the hospital, Garth insisted that the two of them go to the on-call room together to wake her up. By now two hours had elapsed and the drug’s effects should have been wearing off, but when they tried to rouse her, Adrianna was unresponsive. In truth, she appeared to be dead.

Mandy was in a full-blown panic. Garth calmed her down and said he’d help her out. He told her that the best way to handle the situation was to make it look like Adrianna was murdered. At first, Mandy was appalled. They needed to go to the police and explain what happened—that it was an accident. But Garth told her that they’d book her for premeditated murder and that’s when she really lost it. When he gave her an out, she took it. He explained his reasoning.

Adrianna was dead. Nothing they could do would bring her back. If she was “murdered,” they’d both have alibis and be cleared of any wrongdoing. His alibi was he was away camping with his friends. Aaron and Greg would cover for him. Her excuse was that she was on shift working.

The first thing they needed to do was to get the body out of the hospital. They stuffed her into a doubled plastic garbage bag, and as they did this, Chuck Tinsley’s card fell to the floor. Mandy picked it up and they both realized it was a card that some guy had given to Adrianna. The card had his name, his occupation—contractor—his home address, and on the back were his cell number and his work address—some house near the hospital. Reading the card seemed to make Garth angry. Mandy thought that was good. The angrier Garth was at Adrianna, the more he’d help to dispose of the body.

The two of them stuffed Adrianna into a double plastic trash bag along with other trash—discarded papers and the like—just in case someone asked them what was in the bag and they had to open it up.

But no one questioned them as they schlepped the bag onto the loading dock at the emergency vehicle location. Garth pulled his car up to the dock, popped the trunk, and loaded the trash bag. He told Mandy that he’d call her and they’d meet up later on. Mandy never even thought about the security cameras on the dock—a major slipup that got the police looking in the right direction.