Missing Person

by Matt Lincoln

  The name dropped from my lips like stones, and I half worried they would land on my phone and crack the screen. Black went quiet again, but this time, I could hear him breathe, a heavy, almost ragged sound. It went on for what felt like an eternity but was probably only about thirty seconds. Lex and I kept our eyes locked on the phone while we waited, and I didn’t move, every muscle locked in place.

  “Who are you?” Black ground out, anger coloring his words, making them shake.

  “Do you have it?” I asked instead, barely able to breathe.

  “I’ll ask the questions!” Black shouted so loudly that I jumped and almost knocked the phone to the floor. “Now, who the hell are you?”

  “My last name is Greyson,” I said, holding back my first name because everything about Black sent shivers squirming down my spine. If I thought about it too hard, I knew he’d probably be able to track me down using my phone number and last name, but I didn’t really want to think about it too hard. “I’d like to know where my property is, please.” The please was sharp like a knife recently polished, and I felt it slice through the air to the phone.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Black forced his voice to soften, but he’d already given himself away, and he knew it. “I’ve never heard of the Greyson Gem, and I don’t appreciate the accusation in your voice. Good day.”

  “Don’t hang up,” I ordered, and Black actually hesitated, which I wasn’t expecting. I made my own tone level but just a bit dark, a little threatening. “I don’t care who you are or what kind of shady business you’re running. I care about that necklace. I know you’ve heard of it. You spoke with someone about it over the phone back in the seventies. I want to know who has it.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Black insisted coldly. “I’ve never heard of this ‘Greyson Gem,’ and frankly, that’s a stupid name for a necklace. I doubt it’s even worth enough to warrant my time.”

  “I never said it was a necklace,” I said, cutting into the end of his sentence, and I heard him choke slightly.

  He recovered, spitting his next words into the phone. “Most pieces of named jewelry are necklaces. So I made an assumption. So what? It doesn’t mean I know what the hell you’re on about.”

  “Why don’t you want to tell me about the Greyson Gem?” I asked. I cocked my head to the side even though he couldn’t see me and smiled faintly so that the expression colored my words.

  “Don’t call here again,” Black said bluntly, and then he hung up.

  My phone beeped twice, indicating that the line was dead, and I stared down at it, drumming my fingers against the desk.

  “Well, that wasn’t suspicious at all,” Lex said, sitting back in her chair before she fell off the edge.

  “Real weird,” I replied slowly as I thought it over. Obviously, Martin Black knew something about the Greyson Gem. Either it was or had been in his possession, or he knew someone who’d been in contact with it.

  “Did he sound kind of scared to you?” Lex wondered. “Like he was covering it up with anger?”

  I nodded. “Just what the hell are we stepping into?”

  Lex shrugged and shook her head. Martin Black knew more than he was telling, but I would have to develop some other strategy to wring it out of him.

  “What’s next, then?” she asked, mirroring my own thoughts.

  “That’s what we’ve got to figure out,” I said.

  “Have you told Emma about this? Fancy jewelry is kind of her specialty.”

  “Not yet,” I admitted. “It still kind of feels like an odd thing to talk about. Like I’m bragging or something, I don’t know. She’s out of town for the next month at some conference for insurance adjusters. I’ll ask her opinion when she gets back.”

  “Are you doing the long-distance thing?” Lex asked. For someone who refused to talk about her own dating life, she sure liked prying into mine an awful lot.

  “No, not really,” I said. “We’re keeping it casual.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be? I like it better this way. We come together when we’re both in the same place, and when we’re not, we go about our own lives. And I don’t mean that as some cliche, out of date, womanizer, it’s just for sex sort of thing,” I added quickly, though the explanation was more for my benefit than Lex’s. “She matters a lot to me. It’s just, I don’t know, I’ve never really been the serious relationship type.”

  “I get it,” Lex assured me, offering up a smile. “Some people aren’t wired that way. That doesn’t mean their relationships aren’t as important or meaningful.”

  I was glad she understood. It was something I’d always had trouble putting into words, and I’d always felt a bit odd that I couldn’t hold on to a long-term relationship like my friends back in Washington could. It was also good that Emma had been looking for the same thing as I was. I’d frequently run into the problem of people wanting something I couldn’t give them.

  With nothing much left to do, we split for the day. Lex needed to take her mother to an appointment, and I left my car in the MBLIS parking lot to wander the streets for a bit, as I often did after work. I still felt like a newcomer, so I was doing the best I could to familiarize myself with the city—its back alleyways, its odd corners, its nooks and crannies, the way the traffic flowed like blood through veins along the roads and sidewalks.

  It was easy to get lost, wind up in some tiny shop or hole in the wall bar selling strong, cheap drinks while a band rambled along in the corner. New Orleans had all the typical scents of a large city—cement and exhaust and the occasional faint reek of garbage—all compounded by the relentless humidity dripping its warm arms along my shoulders. Certain streets would suddenly smell of frying dough or mingled spices, each new scent walloping me in the nose before disappearing again, and if I wound my way toward a marina, the air would begin to taste of saltwater and sea breeze.

  Foot traffic slowed, and I stopped to watch a funeral procession march by, led by a large jazz band, the music pouring forth from their horns bright and fast and joyful since they had just departed the cemetery. People in the parade behind them danced, couples holding hands and swirling around each other, their black clothes speckled with color and flowers. Tears flowed around wide smiles, and some onlookers clapped along, though no one joined the procession itself.

  I watched until the parade turned a corner and disappeared from sight person by person, the pulsing sound of the brass band rising high above the rooftops to fill the neighborhood with their celebration of the deceased. I thought it would be nice to be mourned so joyfully.

  With a bag of takeout in hand, I returned to my car and headed home. My cottage sat in the Lakeview District, though I didn’t have an actual view of the lake from my street. I could smell the tang of the water when the breeze shifted just right. I parked outside of the small, light blue house. The lawn was a little worse for wear since I’d moved in, as I was used to living in an apartment where I didn’t have to worry about all that, but I was slowly getting the hang of pulling out the mower and watering the flowers when it got too hot.

  I let myself into my now fully furnished home. It had been a trial, shipping all my things down from Washington, and the truck had somehow wound up in Colorado, leaving me sleeping on an air mattress and eating off paper plates for about two weeks. Finally, though, I had dishware and a couch and a television and a proper bed. Some art hung on the walls, mostly black and white photography prints, and I had several pictures of my D.C. friends scattered about the place, though I hadn’t really heard all that much from them since I’d moved down here.

  I loaded up a bowl with beef lo mein, still rejoicing in the fact that I had real bowls to eat from, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and plopped down in front of the TV, feet propped up on the coffee table. I was still thinking about that phone call with Martin Black. He wasn’t a dead-end—clearly, there was something there—but it was probabl
y best to let him cool down a bit before I tried that angle again. Too much, and I might spook him and lose him forever. I might have already done that.

  I should loop Cal in on the investigation. Surely, they’d be able to find something with all their resources and research know-how, and I bet they’d love a new pet project. They always had at least five different things going on.

  And then there was the Christian and Ramirez problem. I was trying not to think about that too much. They needed to make the first move. It was possible Christian didn’t actually know what I’d done on that mission and was just snooping around, trying to get me to blurt out a confession, and I was not about to play my cards when I didn’t have to.

  But that night, I had that dream again, the one that had been increasing in frequency and vividness ever since I’d spoken with Christian at the gala. I walked down a hallway. I knew what lay past that door, and I didn’t want to open it, but this was not a lucid dream, and I did not have control over my feet. They drew me inexorably toward the end of the hall, each footfall sounding like the crash of a boulder off a cliff. I could feel the weight of the gun in my hand, and it was so cold it burned my flesh, my arm trembling to support it, the grip welded to my palm.

  My other hand reached for the doorknob. I tried to force it to slow, to drop back to my side, but I was merely a passenger in this vision, an unwilling visitor to the scene. The door swung open. The creak of its hinges was so impossibly long and loud that it hurt my ears, and I wanted to clap my hands over them to block it out, but my hands were not my own, and the gun was heavy against my palm.

  The dim bulb was too bright. My mind, my memory, said that it should be dim and flickering, barely illuminating the electronics strewn table, but in the dream, it was bright and harsh and threw odd shadows across the floor. The floor and the narrow cot that sat in the corner. The floor and the narrow cot in the corner and the head that poked up from beneath the threadbare blanket. The head that looked at me with wide, young eyes, so much younger than I’d been told I was told they would be.

  The gun rose, dragging my arm along with it. It was pointed right at that young face. The room shook with the pounding of my heartbeat.

  And then I woke up.

  4

  My heart thundered within my chest as sweat slicked my arms and face, the top sheet a confused tangle around my legs. It took me a long moment to figure out that I was awake and in my bed since I’d hung blackout curtains over the windows and the darkness was disorienting. I slumped back against my pillow, shoving hair off my face as I settled more fully into the waking world.

  I checked the time. I still had a half-hour until my alarm went off, but there was no way I was going back to sleep after that, so I rolled out of bed and began to get dressed, figuring I’d be early to work for once in my life.

  When all was said and done, I was still just barely on time, my phone clicking over to eight just as I pulled into the MBLIS parking lot. Our agency had bought up a bankrupt hostel and retrofitted it to meet our needs. It sat by the river, just off the center of the city, the brick a worn, red color. Rachel refused to take down the now-dead neon sign that read “Sleepy Cow Hostel” because she thought it was hilarious for some reason. The rest of us weren’t quite sure what the joke was.

  “Do my eyes deceive me, or is Jace Greyson on time?” Lex called as she locked her car, and I shot finger guns at her with both hands.

  I met her at the door, and we went in together, me holding the door after I swiped my card across the reader.

  “You look particularly tired today,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder to study my face.

  “Didn’t sleep well,” I said, not wanting to get into the whole bad dream/nightmare thing.

  I shook the paper coffee cup in my hand, listening to the sad slosh of the last two swallows, and then I finished it off, tossing it into the trash as we entered the main room of the office. Ramirez had beaten us there, ignoring me as he hung his jacket off the back of his chair.

  I could see the lights on in the basement, so I turned to Lex and said, “I want to ask Cal for their help with the Greyson Gem. Do you want to come with?”

  “I don’t have anything else to do,” Lex said, flinging her bag onto her chair.

  We made our way downstairs to Cal’s lab. They were still in the process of setting it up since it had proved difficult to fit the 1970s wiring to everything that they needed. They’d gotten the mortuary in place, eating up a good portion of the available floor space, but it wasn’t hooked up to anything yet. The shining silver of the three doors matched the autopsy table shoved right up against them, and there was a second wooden table on the other side of the room that was covered in the scientific equipment that wouldn’t fit in the cabinets and counters along the walls. Cal’s triple monitor computer set-up filled one corner, the drone of the cooling fans shifting across the lab.

  Cal was playing a pixelated video game that I didn’t recognize on one screen, was running a search for Ramirez on the second, and had baking videos auto-playing silently on the third. I still didn’t really understand how they split their attention so seamlessly between so many things.

  “Cal,” I said, but they had both earbuds in and didn’t hear me.

  Lex and I walked closer, making no effort to silence the tread of our shoes, but Cal still didn’t notice us, didn’t even see us in the reflection on the far screen. I dropped one hand on their shoulder from behind.

  Cal jumped violently, ripping their earbuds out as they spun around, a hand to their chest. “Damn, Jace, you scared the hell out of me!”

  “Sorry,” I said, grinning, obviously not very sorry at all.

  “What do you want? I’m busy.”

  “So busy,” I said, eyeing the video game they had open.

  Cal paused the game and closed the window. “It’s called multitasking. I’m also running a plate number for Ramirez.”

  I grabbed one of the extra rolling chairs scattered around the room and pulled it up beside Cal. Lex followed suit, tucking one ankle up on her knee.

  “I need your help with a personal project,” I offered.

  “It’s juicy,” Lex told Cal, and they raised one eyebrow, intrigued.

  “My family has this heirloom called the Greyson Gem,” I began. “My however-many-greats grandmother brought it over with her when she immigrated from Ireland in 1850. Here, I’ve got a picture.”

  I stretched out one leg so I could pull a folded piece of paper from my pocket. I opened it up and handed it to Cal and Lex. I already knew what was on it. It was a photocopy of a sepia photograph of my ancestor, though we no longer knew where or when it had been taken. Her name was Aoife Greyson, and she looked thin and a little sad in the picture, though there was a faint smile on her lips. Wisps of hair escaped from her bun as if she’d just come inside from a windy day, and she wore a woolen shawl over her dress. The Greyson Gem hung from her neck. It was hard to make out its details since we were looking at a photocopy of an already faded and worn photo, but you could still tell that there was a single large stone hanging off the chain, its edges rimmed in metal.

  “It was the only thing she brought with her, aside from a few essentials. For a while, she was in New York and then wound up in Chicago,” I continued, “where most of us still live. There’s some debate as to what the stone actually is since this is the only image we have of it, and it’s not exactly in color. Most people say that it’s an emerald, and our name is supposed to be etched into the band around the stone.”

  “What happened to it?” Cal asked, noting how I put the necklace in the past tense.

  “It was lost sometime during World War I,” I continued. “We’re not entirely sure what happened. Bertrand Greyson was in possession of it at the time. He was a part of the force that got shipped off to Europe when America entered the war, and when he got back, it was gone. I think he suspected theft, but he was never able to track down any clues. The search for the necklace has been an inte
gral part of my family ever since, but they just kept coming up empty. Until I spoke with Blair Haddow.”

  Cal was hanging off my every word, legs pulled up into a scrunched criss-cross-applesauce position on the chair. I’d told Lex about the search for the Greyson Gem but not its actual history, and so she was listening intently, too. Cal’s eyebrows jumped up at the mention of the jewel thief we’d caught during our first case.

  “She recognized my last name,” I added. “She said she’d overheard a loan shark named Martin Black mention it, something about how much money it would go for if it was found. She said this was five years ago.”

  “Jace called Martin Black the other day,” Lex cut in. “It was very dramatic.”

  “Did you get the name of his business?” Cal asked.

  “Forest Street Loans. In Los Angeles,” I answered.

  Cal nodded, seeming to make a mental note of the information.

  “Black knew exactly what I was talking about, but he got real cagey and spooked and wouldn’t tell me anything,” I said, finishing up my little tale.

  “So where do I come in?” Cal said. Their eyes burned with curiosity, and they still had the picture in their hand, lifting it up to get a better look in the overhead light.

  “Do you think you could try to dig anything up online? Maybe try to enhance that photo and run it through some databases, if that’s a thing that you can actually do?” I asked. “And maybe run a search on Martin Black as well?”

  “I would love to. Can I keep this?” They motioned to the photocopy.

  “Sure. Everyone in my family has one. I can print off another one if I need it.”

  Cal folded the paper back up and set it on top of a stack of folders on their desk. “I want to meet your family now. It’s kind of amazing how long they’ve been looking for this thing. Most people would have given up by now.”