Missing Person

by Matt Lincoln

  Missing Person

  Crescent City Crimes book 2

  Matt Lincoln

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  There was a knock at my classroom door. I glanced up from my notes for the day’s lecture, and my brow creased for a moment. I wasn’t expecting any visitors, and class didn’t start for a half hour.

  “Come in,” I called, and the door swung open.

  A familiar face stepped inside. Cal Vidal grinned at me, flashing me a peace sign in greeting. They were tall and lean, their dark hair gathered in a loose bun at the nape of their neck, and an intricate floral tattoo crept out from beneath their rolled-up shirt sleeve, traveling all the way down to their wrist.

  “Cal, hey. What are you doing here?” I asked, grinning as I dropped my notes and rounded the podium to give them a hug.

  “I’m giving a guest lecture over on the geek side of things,” Cal replied. “I thought I’d swing by and say hey.” We moved out of the doorway, and they dropped into one of the front row seats, propping their boots up on the desk.

  I sat on the table just to the side of their feet, drawing one of my knees to my chest. “And you didn’t tell me?”

  They shrugged. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “You’re still down in New Orleans these days, aren’t you?” I asked. I was still in touch with the old team, but we were all so busy these days that sometimes we forgot to check in with each other. It was just harder to do so when we weren’t in the same office all the time, or even in the same city. Maybe it was about time for a little family reunion.

  Cal nodded, stretching at their elbow. Despite the years and years since we’d first met, they were still filled with as much restless energy as they had been back then, their foot jiggling atop the desk. “I’ve got a whole forensic team working under me now. It’s pretty cool.”

  “That’s great. Congrats.”

  “Have you heard from any of the others recently?” Cal asked, picking at a frayed fingernail. They were the only one still at the New Orleans office. The rest of us had scattered to the wind one by one.

  I shook my head, a morose feeling descending on my bones. Drifting apart was a natural part of adult life, but it still bummed me out to no end. “I was just thinking that we should put together a reunion. Take over the old office for a bit. Drink too much. Reminisce.”

  “I am totally down for that,” Cal said, a bright grin lightening their angular features. “Can I help you plan it?”

  “You know how much luck I’ve had with event planning, so I would welcome the help,” I said, matching their smile with my own.

  Cal laughed, tipping back their head, remembering that time I’d tried to throw a birthday party for Rachel, and it had ended with all of us stranded in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, in need of rescuing by the Coast Guard, an escapade that we never lived down.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure nothing disastrous happens,” they promised, and I wiped an imaginary bead of sweat away from my forehead.

  “When’s your lecture?” I asked. “My class is starting soon. You should sit in if you have nowhere to be. I’m talking about the Ward case today.”

  “That was a hell of a case,” Cal remarked. They checked the time on their phone. “My class isn’t until the afternoon, so sure, why not? It’s always fun to remember the old glory days. Have you told your class all about how awesome I am?”

  I rolled my eyes, grinning. “Something like that.”

  We chatted a while longer until the first students began to file through the open door. They all looked at Cal curiously, trying to figure out who this stranger was, but Cal just stretched themself out a little more languidly as I went to gather my notes and turn on the projector. When everyone was seated, I cleared my throat to get their attention.

  “Hi, class. Welcome back. We’ve got a special guest with us today. This is Cal Vidal. We used to work together at the New Orleans office.” I gestured to Cal, and they turned to give the class a lazy peace sign as a wave of murmured recognition went around the room. “They’re giving their own talk later today. Is it open to people outside the class?”

  “Why the hell not?” Cal shrugged, and the class laughed.

  “Then I recommend you go. It’s always good to know a bit about the science side of the job, even if that’s not your role. Alright.” I clapped my hands, indicating that I was ready to launch into the day’s lecture, and my students scrambled to open their laptops and find their notes. “Today, we’re talking about what happens when you have a personal stake in a case and how to navigate those lines when they get blurred…”

  1

  Simon Ward lay on his back on the thin mattress, hands laced behind his head as he stared up at the metal bunk above him. He could hear his cellmate breathing in a raspy, almost-snore that made him want to wring the smaller man’s scrawny neck until the sound finally ceased.

  But now was not the time for such rash behavior. There were things to do and plans to be enacted, and soon enough, he wouldn’t have to listen to that harsh and heavy breathing ever again.

  Ward tuned it out as best he could. He’d had plenty of practice doing that by now, so it wasn’t hard to turn his attention to the sounds outside his small cell. He heard someone cough, low and quiet in a futile attempt to hide the noise from the echoing corridor, and he heard boots rounding the corner at the far end of the hall, growing louder as they came toward him. Thirty-eight seconds for the guard to pass him by and round the next corner, and then another twenty-seven minutes before the next watch ambled by—plenty of time for what he had planned.

  As the footsteps drew closer, Ward closed his eyes and rolled toward the wall, feigning sleep. Then he counted off the seconds until the gate clunked to admit the guard to the next section of the cell block. Once the gate was locked, and the guard was another ten seconds away, Ward rolled off the cot, his socked feet silent on the cold cement. The timer in his head was already counting down to the next guard rotation.

  Ward pulled out the cell phone stashed under his mattress and texted the only number in the contact list. The message simply read, “26:43.” He would get no reply, but that was a part of his plan as well. His man would come through. He always did.

  Next, Ward pulled out a black canvas pouch, unzipped it, and set it on top of his cot. Tiny strips of metal gleamed inside, carefully cut and bent into shape over weeks in the shop where he worked. He selected the best of the slim strips and moved to the door. Sure, all the cells were locked electronically inside the security booth at the end of the cellblock, but there was still a keyhole in each door just in case the power failed.

  Ward had scheduled himself seven minutes to pick the lock. It was a bit generous, but he figured it would be good to have that cushion of time since it was awkward to reach between the bars and try to slot the picks into the small hole. He couldn’t s
ee the lock, even with his head jammed into the door, eyes straining downward, so he felt his way around blindly, his makeshift lock picks less than ideal. He broke two of the metal strips, but he’d accounted for that as well and had several extras tucked away in his pouch.

  All in all, it took Ward five minutes and fifty-six seconds to pick the lock, though he didn’t open the door, not wanting to trigger the sensor within the control booth before it was time to make his final move.

  His cellmate snorted and snuffled and shifted in his sleep, and Ward paused to look at the upper bunk, hand resting lightly beside the shiv he had stashed under his pillow. He didn’t want to kill the other man—it wasn’t part of his plan, but he wouldn’t hesitate if the man woke up and made a sound. Ward’s escape had to go down tonight. Every detail was perfectly laid out and ready to go. He wouldn’t lose this chance.

  Luckily, his cellmate simply settled deeper into his pillow, one hand dangling off the edge of the bunk. He snorted one more time and then drifted back into his usual almost-snore. Ward rolled his eyes. What an idiot.

  His cellmate’s interruption had eaten up a few precious seconds, but he’d banked some extra time off the lock picking step, so Ward let it go and dug a parcel wrapped in brown paper out from under his bed. He undid the twine tying the whole thing together, and opened it slowly, carefully, so that the paper didn’t rustle. Inside lay a guard’s uniform, sent to him in pieces over the past three months and snuck in through the kitchens by a guard and a few other prisoners that Ward had bribed handsomely. The guard thought the packages were drugs and hadn’t bothered to check the contents of the boxes he brought in so long as Ward kept the money coming.

  The uniform wasn’t an exact match to what the guards wore here, but it would pass muster from far away, and Ward didn’t plan on getting up close and personal with anyone on his way out.

  He took his time dressing, making sure his movements were slow and silent, that all his buttons were done up properly, and that everything lay as it should. After his boots were laced up, he found his small, compact mirror and settled it on the floor so that the dim light in the corridor fell on it, and when he leaned forward, he could just barely see his reflection. His hair had grown rather long since he’d first hatched this plan, and he trimmed it now, using the tiny pair of scissors he’d stolen from the prison barbershop. With each small snip, a lock of hair drifted to the ground and settled around his knees. He didn’t do a very good job, but haircuts were not his strong suit. He made sure the trim was reasonably even, and then he did his beard as well, wishing for a proper razor.

  Once that was done, Ward scraped the hair into a pile under the bed, hiding it from sight, and brushed away the strands still clinging to his pants. He sat on the cot and checked his timer. Three minutes and thirty-two seconds remained, right on schedule. Ward tucked the lock pick kit into his pocket alongside the cell phone. He would ditch the device as soon as he was five miles away from the prison, not wanting to risk it being traced back to him, but until then, he’d keep it close to make sure his man on the inside didn’t suddenly bail on him.

  The man didn’t actually know what it was he was doing. He was some tech guy one of Ward’s contacts on the outside had found, and he thought he was coming to the prison to do some routine maintenance to the camera system while all the prisoners were asleep. He thought Ward’s number was the contractor’s, letting him know how long he had until he had to reboot the system.

  In actuality, he would cause a two-minute blackout in the cameras that would give Ward just enough time to get out of his cell.

  Speaking of which, Ward could hear the footsteps of the approaching guard. Right on schedule. Ward lay back on his bed, his head facing the cell door so that he could watch the hallway, breathing slowly as he counted down the seconds. He could see the camera from here, a little red light indicating that it was still running.

  Five seconds before the guard was set to walk past Ward’s door, that little light went out, and a grin spread across Ward’s face. He slipped off the cot like a wraith, crouched as he took two steps toward the cell door. Two… one… he thought, and then the guard stepped into view between the bars.

  The guard—a bear of a man named Johnson—didn’t see Ward down on the ground, more concerned with getting to the end of his rounds rather than actually doing his job, and so he was too slow to react when Ward yanked the now unlocked cell door open and leapt out. Ward seized Johnson’s beefy arm with one hand and heaved, dragging the man closer until Ward could wrap his other hand around Johnson’s neck and press the blade of the shiv clasped between his fingers to the other man’s exposed artery. A strangled cry came from Johnson’s mouth, but it quickly died as Ward dug the blade in a little hard.

  “Shut up,” Ward growled. “Come with me.”

  He yanked the guard into his cell, ignoring the way Johnson’s hands scrabbled for his radio or his baton or anything he could use to save himself. Ward didn’t give him the chance to remember his wits and fight back. He slammed Johnson’s head against the bars with a resounding thud, hauled back, and did it again so that Johnson slumped, boneless, in his arms. The maneuver was louder than he would have liked, but he’d weighed that against the time it would have taken to choke Johnson out, and the risk of the guard breaking free, and had decided that faster was better.

  Ward let Johnson’s limp form slither to the ground and listened for any sign of detection. His roommate still snored up above—the man was an astoundingly heavy sleeper—and the rest of the cellblock seemed undisturbed. Ward breathed a sigh of relief. That had been the most uncertain part of his plan, and he absolutely hated uncertainty.

  Ward hauled Johnson up onto the cot, took his key ring, key card, and baton, and then used Johnson’s own handcuffs to lock him to the bed frame. He covered the man up with his blanket, though it wasn’t quite long enough to cover him properly. Ward took one last look around the cell to make sure that nothing looked out of order, the grin on his lips fierce and a little sharp. Then he let himself out of the cell and locked it up behind him using Johnson’s keys.

  He paused in the corridor to take a deep breath, and though it was the same prison air he’d been breathing for years, it tasted different this time, like it was just a bit fresher than it had been before.

  Ward bounced the keyring in his palm once and then set off down the corridor, buzzing himself through the door at the end of the cellblock with Johnson’s key card. From there, it was pretty simple to wind his way through the angular corridors of the prison, his head bowed to keep any of the other guards from getting too good a look at his face. He needn’t have bothered. All they saw was the uniform before their eyes bounced away again.

  Ward’s hand fell on the door to the outside. He kept the satisfied smile off his face just in case anyone was watching as he turned the handle and pushed it open, stepping out into the warm night. He pulled the dusty air deep into his lungs as he walked away from the prison and reveled in the way his saliva immediately began to dry up, tipping his head back to look up at the sky. The stars shone brightly above him, and the moon was full, lighting his way into the parking lot.

  It was simple enough to hot-wire the warden’s car. The choice in transportation was perhaps unnecessarily obvious, but he allowed himself the luxury of sticking it to the man who’d kept him locked up all this time and who seemed to delight in doling out punishments. It only needed to get him fifty-three miles, and then he’d dump it in a lake and find something new.

  The engine revved as Ward twisted the final wire into place, and he slowly wrapped his hands around the steering wheel, enjoying the way the vehicle rumbled beneath him, promising freedom far from the cold, gray box behind him. He put his foot to the accelerator and peeled out of the parking lot.

  Step one of his plan was complete.

  It was on to step two.

  2

  Alexa Martine and I looked at each other from across the closed double doors. We each had our guns out,
held down by our thighs while we listened to the banging going on inside the warehouse. There was shouting layered just underneath, but it was impossible to make out the actual words.

  I held up three fingers, and Lex nodded, reaching out to grip one of the door handles. When I reached one, she yanked it open, the metal of the sliding track squalling. I leapt inside, gun raised.

  “MBLIS!” I shouted, biting back the “FBI!” that I was so used to yelling. I wouldn’t make that mistake again. “Nobody move!”

  The room froze for just a second. A large printing press dominated the cement floor, churning out product, several people arrayed around it with matching expressions of surprise on their faces. There were tables in rows across the back half of the space, stacked with cardboard boxes, more workers sorting their contents. There were about a dozen people in the warehouse, compared to the two of us, but there was only one person I cared about. I could see him in the newly erected glass office just behind the printing press.

  Then everything erupted into chaos. Half of the people scattered, racing for side doors or the button that would raise the warehouse’s main entrance, several remained frozen, newbies who couldn’t yet process what was happening, and the last three, the ones that really mattered, went for their own weapons.

  “Down on the ground!” I yelled, though my voice was barely audible over the thump-thump-thump of the printing press. Either they didn’t hear me or they didn’t care, because the frantic activity continued, and the man closest to me raised his gun, his expression hard. I dove to the side, rolling across the ground and skidding to a stop behind a waist-high stack of boxes just as a gunshot rent the air. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lex duck back outside, pause for a second, and then rush in, racing for cover on the opposite side of the open doors as me. I poked my head up and shot at the woman swiveling her gun arm around to track Lex, nailing her in the bicep and giving Lex just enough time to slide behind another stack of boxes.