Missing Person

by Matt Lincoln

  Would the judge ask Malia what she wanted? Was she old enough to understand all the implications of such a decision? Eight years seemed so young, yet it also almost felt like they were talking about her as if she were a precious vase, not an actual person with her own wants and feelings.

  “You have records of all the issues I’ve brought up at past meetings,” Jack said to the judge. “I won’t reiterate them all here. We’d be here all day.” He paused as if waiting for a tittering laugh, and I ground my bent knuckles into the chair underneath my thighs. “But I’d ask you to look over them again before you come to a verdict. Thank you.” He bowed his head and returned to his bench, running a gentle hand over Malia’s head.

  “Malia,” the judge said. She softened her voice from the brusque town she’d used with all us adults, taking off her glasses as she offered the girl a smile. “Would you like to say anything? What do you want?”

  Malia looked up at Jack, and he nodded encouragingly. Had he coached her in what to say? I squinted at him suspiciously, trying to glean the answer from his body language. Malia stood, though she stayed behind the table, still holding onto the rabbit, scooting a couple of inches closer to her father.

  “I miss Mom when she’s not around,” Malia said, and I saw Rachel’s shoulders shake as her breath caught. “I want to see her more. She makes the best pancakes. She doesn’t make them when I’m at Dad’s.”

  Malia sat down again, and Jack placed his hand on her back, smiling, though I couldn’t imagine that was what he’d wanted her to say.

  “You’ve all given me a lot to think about,” the judge announced, drawing our attention back to her bench. “We’ll take an hour recess, and then I’ll give my verdict.” She banged her gavel down, dismissing us.

  Rachel stood immediately and stepped across the aisle to approach Malia’s and Jack’s table. She hugged her daughter, cupping the back of Malia’s head, and closed her eyes while Jack watched and his mother-in-law made a barely disguised face of displeasure. Rachel released Malia, crouched down, and began to speak, though her voice was low and didn’t carry.

  “Let’s go out to the lobby,” Lex suggested to the group.

  We filed out of the bench and made our way out of the courtroom. Outside, I stretched, spine cracking. My butt felt numb from so long on such a hard seat.

  “What do you think the judge will say?” Cal asked, but I just shook my head. I had no idea.

  “I’m going to go locate a vending machine,” I said. “Anyone want anything?”

  The others were okay snack-wise, so I left them to chat quietly amongst themselves and went to poke around the lobby. I found two vending machines tucked into an alcove just off a staircase. One contained sandwiches that I probably wouldn’t trust enough to eat even if they were the last things on earth, and the other the usual assortment of snacks. I had a five-dollar bill in my pocket, so I loaded up a few candy bars and two bags of chips, making sure I grabbed Rachel’s favorite, chewy Sweet Tarts.

  I bundled everything up in my arms and crossed the lobby again, listening to the echo of my footsteps. Rachel had joined the group, Malia pressed to her side as Rachel introduced her to everyone.

  “And that’s Jace,” Rachel finished, pointing to me as I approached.

  I smiled at Malia and tried to wave around my armful of snacks, almost dropping them. “For you,” I said and passed Rachel the Sweet Tarts. “And what would you like?” I asked Malia, crouching down in front of her and extending the remaining snacks for her to choose from. I glanced back up at Rachel. “If that’s okay?”

  Rachel nodded, and Malia took the Hersheys. “Thank you,” she said politely, and I grinned. She was pretty adorable.

  I straightened and offered food to the others, and even though they’d said they were fine not five minutes ago, both Lex and Cal snagged a snack.

  “What do we do until the judge calls us back in?” I asked Rachel, cracking open the bag of Fritos.

  Rachel glanced down at Malia, who had a worried expression on her small face, turning the unopened candy bar over and over in her hands. “I brought a deck of cards. How about we all play a game? Does that sound fun, sweetie?”

  “I like card games,” Malia said, and so we all sat down in a circle on the ground, and Rachel dug the deck out of her purse.

  Lex leaned over and whispered in my ear, “No swearing in front of a kid.”

  “Hey, you have a worse mouth than me,” I shot back quietly.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “I do not.”

  “Fine,” I admitted. “But Cal has the worst mouth out of all of us. Remind them.”

  “Fair point.” Cal was on Lex’s other side, and when she scooted closer and whispered the warning to them, their face contorted into an expression that said, “Oh crap, that’s right.” I hid my smile by peering into my chip bag to see what remained.

  Rachel decided that we would play Go Fish since it would accommodate a slightly larger group, and she didn’t have to explain the rules to anyone. I wanted to ask her if she’d heard anything more on Simon Ward but now wasn’t the time, not with her daughter sitting beside her. But I could tell it was still on her mind, even if she’d tucked her phone away so she wouldn’t constantly check it. The news weighed on her brow, dragging it into a worried furrow above her nose that never went away even when she smiled at Malia or laughed at one of our terrible jokes.

  With the game growing ever more competitive, the hour passed quickly, and for the final hand, I put the last candy bar up as a prize for the winner. We let Malia win. I didn’t know if it was a decision that we all came to separately or if it happened naturally, but either way, Malia beamed as she claimed the Three Musketeers, and Rachel nodded gratefully to the rest of us over her head.

  The deck of cards went back into Rachel’s purse, and then we headed into the courtroom for the verdict, following the call of the clerk. Malia sat at Rachel’s table this time, their hands linked together, and I perched on the edge of the bench behind them, the junk food heavy in my stomach as we waited for the judge to enter.

  She came through the back door two minutes later, and every single person in the courtroom straightened and snapped to attention. She mounted her tall seat, banging her gavel even though she already held the eyes of the room.

  “I’ve reached a verdict,” she announced, and Rachel froze in her seat, poised in a gut-wrenching sort of anticipation. “I grant partial custody to Ms. Bane on a trial basis. Six months, and then we re-evaluate.”

  Lex put her hand on my shoulder before I could leap out of my chair and start cheering. Rachel sagged in relief and hugged Malia close, burying her face in her daughter’s fine, blond hair as our bench let out a collective breath. Jack smiled tightly but nodded, accepting the verdict.

  “I’ll leave it to you and your lawyers to work out the details,” the judge finished.

  Rachel looked up at her, wiping her face. “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  The judge nodded and smiled for the first time that day, her professional mask dropping away. “You’re welcome. It’s up to you to make it work.”

  “I will. I promise I will.” Cheeks wet, Rachel kissed Malia’s forehead and held her close, the girl’s smaller arms wrapped around her. I smiled then motioned for my coworkers to follow me from the courtroom, leaving Rachel with this private moment with her daughter and the joy of the judge’s decision.

  6

  Obviously, Rachel took the next day off to get things settled with the lawyers and spend the time with her daughter. Ramirez was out chasing a lead on his case without us, so Cal, Lex, and I set up a bunch of obstacles on the second-floor training room and played the floor is lava for a while rather than doing any actual work. I’d been practicing my parkour skills ever since the Blair Haddow case, and I cleaned the floor with the others until Lex and Cal teamed up and sacrificed themselves to tackle me into the lava.

  Rachel texted us to tell us that she would be back the next day, so the following mor
ning, we made sure we were actually at our desks, doing something that at least appeared to be productive. She was all smiles when she swept through the door, carrying a large pink pastry box.

  “I brought beignets!” she announced and made the rest of us chase her into the conference room, where she set them down on the long oval table that was still large for the number of people who actually worked in the office. “Thank you for everything you guys said at the hearing. I don’t think I would’ve gotten custody without it. And you know, it was just nice to hear.” She grinned at us, the expression wide and toothy.

  “It was all true,” I said, snagging two of the powdered sugar-covered doughnuts and then retreating to my chair. “We’re really happy for you.”

  “There are still some logistics to work out, but I’m hopeful about it.” Rachel’s expression changed, becoming more serious as she took the chair at the head of the table. “There is something else that we need to discuss.”

  Ramirez, Cal, Lex, and I sat at attention, which was somewhat hard to do with beignets in hand, so I set mine down and wiped my fingers off.

  “That phone call I got was from a state penitentiary down in Texas. They called to tell me that Simon Ward escaped since I was part of the team that put him in there ten years ago. We took him down for human trafficking and first-degree murder. It was supposed to be a life sentence.”

  Silence fell across the conference room for a moment, and the sugary residue in my mouth suddenly felt acidic.

  “Do you think he’ll come after you?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said, and each word was a heavy stone dropping from her mouth to thud to the table. “They’re not sure why he escaped, but it’s clear the plan’s been in the works for a while. They think he bribed a couple of guards, though, of course, no one’s willing to come forward, and he had help on the outside as well.”

  “What was he like?” Lex asked. “When you were trying to catch him?”

  The memories from that case flashed across Rachel’s eyes, carrying a darkness with them that threw shadows over her face. “He’s the very definition of a bad dude. He killed Amherst’s—that was the lead agent on the case—partner in cold blood. And though we never quite managed to pin these on him, we were pretty sure he’d killed at least seven other people. He trafficked hundreds of people across the border, to and from Mexico, Africa, Asia, pretty much anywhere to meet his client’s needs. He calls himself Charon because he ferries people across the water.”

  “Jeez,” I said, though that word was nowhere near large enough to encompass all that I was feeling. My skin crawled, and my guts had turned to tight, painful knots as I thought about that man out amongst the public once again.

  “That’s one overdramatic pseudonym,” Cal muttered, trying to lighten the mood, but there was no shifting the gravity of the conversation.

  “He’d be stupid to come after me or anyone from the old team,” Rachel assured us, and it sounded like she was trying to convince herself of that, too. “We don’t have jurisdiction. That’s for the U.S. Marshals. But I also can’t sit around here and do nothing knowing who he is and what he’s done. I want to try to find him. We won’t go after him—I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes—but we can turn over our findings to the proper authorities. Henry, I know you’re on your own case, but would the rest of you help?”

  “Hell yeah, we’ll help,” I said, and Lex nodded vehemently beside me, her face set and hard. “That guy’s a monster. He can’t walk free.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Rachel said, bunching her fist up on top of the table. “I helped catch him once. Surely, I can do so again.”

  “Does he have any known associates?” Ramirez asked. “That’s the easiest place to start.”

  Rachel rubbed at her chin as she thought about the question. “Most of them went to jail with him. His partner, Frances Dowell, went to ground when we took down Ward, and he did a bang-up job of disappearing. If we could rustle up a few of Ward’s old clients, though, maybe we could shake something loose.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll start,” I said, glad to have real work to occupy my time once again.

  “I can get you guys the old case file. It should have a list of his last known clients, though I doubt he’ll go to them since he’ll know they’re compromised,” Rachel said. “But it doesn’t hurt to check. Maybe there’s something in the file that will give us a clue as to what he wants badly enough to escape from prison for it.”

  “You said it was a life sentence?” I asked, and Rachel nodded. “Could it be as simple as him not wanting to spend the rest of his life in prison?”

  Rachel shrugged. “Maybe, but I know Ward. He always wants something. He’s always got some kind of plan in the works. He has to be after something.”

  “If we know what that is, it’ll be easier to catch him,” Lex said. Motive was always the biggest clue in any case.

  “Anything else you can tell us?” Ramirez asked.

  “He’s sly,” Rachel nodded. “We barely caught him. Ward’s a master planner. He was always two steps ahead of him until Amherst realized that we needed to act unpredictably and as counterintuitively as possible. Once we started trying to do that, Ward couldn’t anticipate us any longer, and we were able to get the jump on him. Even then, it was a close thing.” Rachel sat up in her seat for just a second before she drooped backward again, rubbing at one eye as she sighed, and an exhaustion born from worry spread throughout her bones. “Why did this have to happen now? Malia is coming to stay with me next week. I can’t have this hanging over my head while trying to prove that work doesn’t consume my life. I need this to work.”

  “So let us handle things,” I insisted. “Trust us to look for Ward, so you don’t have to take it home to her.”

  But Rachel shook her head. “He’s still my responsibility. I can’t let you bear that burden alone.”

  “Then we’d better get started,” Lex decided. “The sooner we find him, the sooner you can focus on your daughter.” Rachel smiled softly, nodding and drawing energy from Lex’s statement.

  It took her two days to requisition the old case files for us to look at, and she only managed it because she wouldn’t stop pestering the U.S. Marshal’s office. She forwarded the email to the rest of us, and when I first opened it, I had to stop and stare at my computer screen for a minute because there was an insane number of files attached. I glanced over at Lex, and she had the same overwhelmed look in her eyes.

  There was nothing to do but start going through them, so I started clicking through them one by one. The files painted a picture of a cold and ruthless man, someone with little regard for human life, someone interested in money and power, who would do anything to obtain and maintain both. They didn’t have an exact count on the number of people he trafficked, but it was a lot. A hell of a lot. There was something broken in that man’s brain if he could ruin so many lives without a care in the world.

  I had to stop and move away from my computer when I came across the pictures of what Ward did to Amherst’s partner, Jonas Fineberg. Killed in cold blood, Rachel had said, but that didn’t cover the half of it. Fineberg had been butchered to send a message. Ward had cut off one of his hands and broken both shins, carving up his face until he was barely recognizable. He’d been killed with a stab to the gut so that he bled out slowly, painfully. Fineberg didn’t look human anymore in the crime scene photos, splayed out in a dark boathouse, lit by harsh, white lights so that all the shadows seemed unnatural, the blood far too red.

  That had been the mistake that led to Ward’s capture, I thought. He’d meant it as a warning, a threat to get Amherst’s team off his back, but instead, it had thrown Amherst into a rage, and after that, he switched up their strategy to be more unpredictable, using Ward’s love of ten-step plans against him. Ward would undoubtedly be more careful this time around, less showy but just as deadly in pursuit of his aims.

  The previous team had drafted a list of Ward’s
known associates and clients, though most of them were crossed out with notes like “DECEASED” or “IN PRISON,” and there was a final annotation at the bottom that said they in no way thought this was a complete list. I focused on the few clients who didn’t have lines through their names. There were seven of them. They were scattered far and wide around the world, with three in North America. These were people whose ties with Ward were suspected but never proven or had such powerful lawyers that they were nigh on untouchable. There was a power broker on Wall Street, a crime boss in Mexico, even a state senator who’d weathered three other scandals and somehow still held his seat. These weren’t people that we could simply call up on the phone and say, “Hi, we’re federal agents. Have you heard from the recently escaped convict, Simon Ward?” We’d get laughed off the line.

  We’d be better off trying to find Ward’s old partner, Frances Dowell, but the man had disappeared like he’d never even existed in the first place. He hadn’t been at the marina where Amherst had finally taken down Ward, and there was no sign as to where he’d gone. Cal was trying to see what they could track down, but three days later, they still hadn’t had much luck.

  “Have we gotten anything from Ward’s old contacts yet?” Rachel asked on Friday, almost a week after Ward had escaped prison. We were gathered in the conference room to debrief and discuss our next steps.

  Lex and I glanced at each other. Ramirez was off chasing down a lead on his heroin dealer, who was proving to be more slippery than Ramirez had thought, and Cal was staring hard at their tablet, trying to pretend like they weren’t there so that Lex and I would have to be the ones to answer. Lex slanted her eyes away from mine, lips pressed together. Dammit. I was always the one who had to deliver bad news.

  “No,” I began slowly, trying to delay the inevitable. “We haven’t called anyone yet.”

  “What?” Rachel said, blinking at me dangerously.

  “Well, these aren’t exactly people that you can just phone willy-nilly,” I explained. “They’ve all got lawyers and personal assistants who know how to give the law the runaround. We’d never even get close, and we can’t go shake any of them down in person because we don’t have jurisdiction. Besides, they’d probably tip Ward off the instant we let them go, and any information we’d glean from them would be moot.”