Missing Person

by Matt Lincoln

  We ate our sandwiches, but I didn’t taste mine. I didn’t think the others did, either. I could feel each of the textures in my mouth, but they didn’t really mean anything. I barely made it through half of the sandwich before I gave up. We paid, got boxes for the rest of the food, and then piled into the car to head back to the office. The ride was silent, and I was glad to be the driver to have something to focus on.

  There was an unfamiliar car in the lot when we arrived, but I didn’t pay it much mind as I led the way toward the side door. Sometimes, tourists parked in our lot, not realizing that it was private property despite the clearly posted signs. We never bothered to call anyone about it. It wasn’t like we needed all the spots.

  “Cal?” I called as we made our way up the hall that had once served as an employee entrance. “You here? We just spoke to--”

  Cal appeared at the end of the corridor and flicked their hand past their throat, eyes wide as they shook their head just slightly. I trailed off and frowned questioningly.

  “Hey, guys,” Cal said with a false cheer in their voice. “Guess who just arrived?”

  I shrugged one shoulder, not putting the pieces together until a woman stepped into frame behind Cal’s shoulder.

  “Spoke with whom?” U.S. Marshal Marta Graham asked.

  She was tall enough that she didn’t need heels to tower over Cal from behind, dark-framed glasses perched on her nose in front of her severe brown eyes. She wore her hair short and slicked close to her scalp, the ends trailing down to just barely tickle the nape of her neck, black against her nut-brown skin. She seemed to be made of mostly angles, though she held herself casually despite that, her hands tucked into her pockets, the sleeves of her white shirt rolled up to her pointy elbows. A pocket watch chain trailed across the front of her gray vest, and her slim-cut pants were cuffed just above the ankle, a hint of a tattoo peeking out between the fabric and her leather shoe, though I couldn’t make out what it was from this angle.

  “Marshal Graham,” I said, my voice just a little too bright from surprise. “You’re here. I thought your plane got in this evening.”

  “I caught an earlier one,” she said simply. “Who were you just speaking with?”

  “Detective Barrett,” I replied and cursed myself the moment the lie was out of my mouth. “He’s heading up the case for the NOPD. We just wanted to let him know that our resources are at his disposal, but we wouldn’t be able to help him much other than that.”

  Just great. Our first interaction with the marshal and the very first thing out of my mouth was a lie. We were off to a fantastic start.

  “And you needed three of you to do that?” Graham asked, one eyebrow raising very slightly.

  “Jace and I went.” Lex stepped in, her expression casual as we shrugged. “Then we picked up Rachel and grabbed some lunch. She wanted to be here when you arrived.”

  Rachel nodded. “That’s right. I wanted to speak with you. Actually, shall we move to the conference room? This hallway isn’t exactly the most comfortable spot for a conversation.” She looked pointedly over Graham’s shoulder at the wide expanse of the office behind her.

  “Of course,” Graham said smoothly and stepped back to allow Rachel to lead the way.

  I snagged Cal’s elbow to hold the tech back for a beat, allowing Graham and Rachel to get ahead of us.

  “Why didn’t you text me that she was here?” I whispered. We slowly followed the other two toward the conference room, though I made sure there was some space between us.

  “I was about to,” Cal replied. “She got here five minutes ago.”

  “She told you she’d be here in the evening on purpose,” Lex said, eyeing Graham’s back. “She wanted to catch us off guard.”

  “Why?” I wondered. “It’s not like we’re the bad guys.”

  Lex and Cal just shrugged. Neither of them had an answer to that.

  The three of us picked up the pace so we could enter the conference room before the door swung shut. Rachel sat at the head of the table very deliberately, eyes on Graham as she slowly lowered herself into the chair, asserting her dominance within the office. Graham seemed unperturbed and simply took the seat to Rachel’s right, folding one leg over the other. Cal, Lex, and I trickled into the remaining chairs.

  Rachel smiled at Graham, but it was a sharp sort of expression, and Graham returned it in kind.

  “My daughter has been taken by a violent monster of a man,” Rachel began, each word like a deliberately placed finger on a piano.

  Graham nodded. The tension in the room rose until I could feel it prickling the hairs along my forearms.

  Rachel’s eyes narrowed. “You have no right to kick me—to kick us—off this case. She is my daughter. What kind of parent would I be if I didn’t search for her?”

  “I’m sympathetic, I really am,” Graham replied, but she didn’t sound terribly sympathetic. She sounded more like she was reading from a card. “But think of it from my perspective as well. If you were not the director of this branch, you wouldn’t be involved in the case. No matter what you think, you’ve lost the ability to look at things objectively. If I let you on the case, you’ll be a liability to the investigation and to your daughter.”

  These were all things that I had thought myself at one point or another, but I still bristled to hear someone else lay them out so plainly.

  “But I am the director,” Rachel snapped back. “I’m not just some average Jane coming in off the street. I have resources and skills and the ability to help you, and you can’t expect me to sit on my hands and do nothing with them.”

  “That’s exactly what I expect you to do.” Graham’s voice took on a colder, firmer edge as she adjusted her glasses and locked eyes with Rachel. “I won’t have someone jeopardizing this case, and I will do whatever it takes to keep you out of it. You don’t have jurisdiction here, Director Bane. Ward is a fugitive who has crossed state lines, so that makes him mine. Please, just do as I say. Don’t make me take more drastic measures.”

  Rachel floundered, mouth working soundlessly as she searched for another avenue of argument. I was too far away to nudge her with my foot, so I tried to catch her eye and give her a look to remind her of the plan. Rachel’s jaw clenched as she fought with herself, but she finally sighed and slumped back in her chair, meeting my gaze for just a second. She looked defeated, and I hoped that it was mostly an act.

  “Fine,” she said, nodding to Graham. “Whatever you say.”

  Graham smiled, but there wasn’t much warmth to it. “Good. I’m glad we’re in agreement. Now, why don’t you tell me what you already know?”

  We took her through Jack’s story and what little we’d put together about Ward’s suspected motivations. I fudged the timeline just a bit to make it seem like we’d spoken with the neighbors before Graham had called and ordered us off the case. She raised her eyebrow at that but seemed mollified when I mentioned the gray Subaru hatchback. We did not mention our recent talk with Linda and Meg, hoping that Graham wouldn’t think to involve the Coast Guard so we could keep pursuing that avenue on our own.

  “Alright, very good,” Graham said once we were finished. “I’ll touch base with this Detective Barrett and go from there. Thank you for your assistance up to this point. I’ll take it from here.”

  She stood up from the table and tugged the hem of her vest straight, tipping her head to our little group before she swept from the conference room and started for the door. Ramirez appeared at the end of the corridor just as she reached it, but she stepped past him with barely a second glance, and he turned to watch her go, his body language confused. Rachel waved him over, and he hurried to join us in the glass box, pointing a thumb back over his shoulder toward where Graham had disappeared. “Who was that?”

  “The U.S. Marshal,” Lex and I said in unison, our voices bitter.

  “Oh,” Ramirez said and looked behind him again as if she might still be there.

  “Did you hear we’re ‘off th
e case?’” Rachel asked, making quotation marks in the air, and Ramirez stared at her in confusion. “We’re going to investigate on our own. Graham can’t know.”

  “Gotcha,” Ramirez said, and just like that, he was onboard. Aside from the strain between the two of us, we had a very ride-or-die office, and I really appreciated that.

  “How’s your case going?” Lex asked him.

  Ramirez dragged a chair away from the table and dropped into it, exhaustion making the wrinkles on his face seem deeper. “I was this close.” He held up his thumb and index finger, barely an inch apart. “But he just slipped out of my grasp.”

  “If you’d brought help--” Lex began, but Ramirez cut her off.

  “It’s good I didn’t, what with all this going down.”

  “I don’t expect you to drop your ongoing case,” Rachel told him. “Actually, it’ll be good if you keep that up. It might give us a bit of cover while we’re searching for Ward behind Graham’s back.”

  Ramirez nodded. “I’ll do that, and if there’s anything else I can do to help, let me know.”

  “I will. I’m sure we’ll need all hands on deck.” Rachel smiled at him and then extended it to the rest of us. “Cal, any luck locating that car?”

  “Nope,” Cal replied, popping the ‘p.’ “Sorry. But I’ve got the alert routed to my phone, so if anything shows up, we’ll know.”

  “So we wait,” Rachel said, and I could tell that the idea pained her. She dropped her head to her hands and pulled at her hair. “Dammit, was Jack right? Is this my fault?”

  “Of course not!” I said quickly, and the others were just a second behind me so that we sounded like the echo of a video call.

  “This is Ward’s fault,” I continued. “No one else’s.”

  It didn’t quite look like Rachel believed me, but she nodded. “Thanks. Now, I’ll be in my office if you need me. I need to go put my head down for a bit.”

  I tried to keep myself from watching her as she left the conference room, but I couldn’t help it. Neither could anyone else.

  “Is there more we could be doing?” Lex asked after the glass door had swung shut. “I feel like we’re just offering her meaningless platitudes.”

  “Yeah, and unfortunately, I don’t know what else there is to do unless we want to go drive around and hope we spot Ward’s car,” I quipped.

  “Maybe Barrett’s APB will rustle something up,” Cal suggested in an attempt to bolster the group’s mood.

  “Not that we’d be able to act on it,” I said sourly. I hated this powerless feeling, hated feeling like someone had cut my legs off at the knee.

  Mood dark, we left the conference room and separated, each of us trying to think up some task that would make us feel useful. I found myself flipping through boat auction sites, figuring out if any had been purchased recently and if they were ones Ward might be interested in. If Graham noticed the foul air when she returned a few hours later, she gave no sign, just let herself into the conference room and began to set up a workstation there. Lex and I couldn’t help but glare at her as she walked so casually through our space. I knew it wasn’t fair of us—Graham was probably a perfectly decent person and good at her job—but the nasty situation had turned us against her. She was the perfect scapegoat. It wasn’t personal.

  After Graham’s return, the rest of us stopped getting work done, more concerned with spying on her through the glass and trying to pick up any clues on what she might be working on. Rachel startled us all by slamming the door to her office open. Graham had headphones in and was the only person who didn’t notice.

  Rachel’s eyes were wide and frantic as she hurried over to us, her steps a staccato against the floor, and she braced both hands on top of my desk. “Let’s go downstairs. Right now.”

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  Rachel’s gaze flicked toward Graham, whose back was to us. “Cal’s in the lab, right?”

  “Yeah, what’s--?” I began, but Rachel was already rushing for the stairs, motioning for us to follow her.

  Ramirez, Lex, and I glanced at each other and then checked one last time to make sure Graham wasn’t paying attention before we stood up from our desks and chased after Rachel. We caught up with her in the lab as Cal looked away from their computer, confusion writ across their face.

  “What’s up, guys?” Cal asked.

  “Let me log in to my email,” Rachel said and shooed Cal away from the keyboard. Cal shot us a questioning look, but I shook my head and shrugged. I had no idea what was going on.

  While Rachel got logged in, the rest of us gathered up the chairs scattered around the lab and crowded in behind the computer monitors. Lex slipped back to the stairwell and quietly shut the door.

  “What is it, Rachel?” Ramirez asked, but Rachel wouldn’t answer. She simply pulled up an email from sender “W” with the subject line, “For your viewing pleasure.” There was a video in the body of the message and nothing else. With a trembling finger, Rachel reached out and pressed play.

  The video buffered for a second before it started to move. A man stepped away from the camera, though his body blocked most of the room, and he gave us a wave with a serrated knife in hand. He was older, in his fifties maybe, and his hair was mostly silver, matching his carefully trimmed beard. There was a scar hidden just under the hair on his jaw, and his black eyes were bright, almost friendly. He wore a white linen shirt and pants, leather boat shoes on his feet, and aside from the knife and scar, he looked like someone’s retired sailor uncle.

  “Hey there, Agent Bane,” Simon Ward said, his voice all good cheer and happy reunions. “Or should I call you Director Bane now? Congrats on the promotion. You really have me to thank for it, don’t you?” He winked at the camera, and the sight of him made me feel sick to my stomach. “Sorry, I’m not here to chat. I’m sure you’ve guessed that already. I’ve got something that belongs to you.”

  Ward stepped to the side, and everyone but Rachel gasped. Rachel just looked broken. Malia Harrison-Bane was tied to a chair behind Ward, a gag wrapped around her mouth. She was still dressed in her dinosaur print pajamas, and her hair was messy, scattered across her red face. Tears had carved sticky tracks down her cheeks, visible even through the video, and her feet were bare against the wooden floor.

  “I’ve got a favor to ask,” Ward said as he moved to stand beside Malia and gently placed a hand on her head. Malia trembled at his touch. “I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I grabbed a little collateral to make sure you go through with it.” Ward took his hand away and stepped closer to the camera again. His expression changed, growing harder and angrier, and it changed the very shape of his face, carving it into a stone mask of a man. “You remember my old partner, Frances Dowell? Of course, you do. I know that dolt betrayed me to you. I know he’s the reason I was caught and thrown away to rot in that cell.” He spat out the last word and then took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “It’s time that he paid. That’s where you come in. If you want to see your girl again, you’ll frame Dowell for a crime so heinous that he’ll get just as much time as I did. And you better make it stick, too, because you’ll only get this little cherub back after Dowell is convicted and behind bars.”

  Ward smiled at the camera, his teeth startlingly white. “I’m sure it’ll be easy for someone of your position and influence. Oh, and one last thing.” He held up a finger, still smiling like he was telling a story at a barbeque. He raised his knife and gave it a wave, the overhead light glinting off the silver blade. “If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill her.”

  And then he stopped the recording.

  The five of us stared at the computer screen. There was a hard knot in my stomach, spreading its fiery fingers through my insides, filling me up with fear and rage, the two emotions fighting for dominance within me. I gripped the armrests of my chair, hoping to crush them like two pop cans as my muscles shook. I wanted to hit something or smash something or race from the office and beat Ward’s
smug, smiling face in.

  “Holy crap,” Cal said, and that somehow encapsulated all that I was feeling.

  “That bastard,” Lex spat. She shot up from her chair, but there was nowhere for her to go. Ramirez scowled at the paused video, his fury quiet but potent. Rachel was the only one still calm, though maybe calm wasn’t the right word. She looked drained, empty.

  I took one deep breath and then another, forcing my nerves to calm. We were no good to Malia if we let our emotions get the better of us. We would only prove Graham right. “Okay, everyone, slow down, take a breath.” I waited until everyone had done as I instructed before I continued. “Now we know what Ward wants. That’s good. We can use that. What else does the video tell us?”

  Cal took control of the mouse and rewound the video to a frame where we could see both Malia and Ward. The floor was a richly colored wood, and the walls were painted a plain white, but it seemed like there was a slight slope to them. “Did y’all hear the noise in the background?” Cal asked and clicked play. I tried to ignore Ward’s speech and listen to what was going on behind him. There was some kind of rumble under his words. “Give me one second here.”

  Cal pulled themself closer to the computer and ran their fingers across the keyboard. They saved the video to the desktop and then dragged it into a program to open up on another monitor. “I’m going to see if I can isolate that sound and magnify it. Maybe we’ll be able to tell what it is.”

  The four of us waited with bated breath while Cal worked. Their tongue poked out between their teeth. Rachel’s expression was unreadable but for her laser focus on Cal’s actions. It took a couple of minutes, but Cal got the audio separated and played back that rumble. We listened to it hard, and I closed my eyes as if that might help me better identify it.

  “An engine?” I suggested. There was a deep, rhythmic thump-thump-thump to the noise.

  “That’s my best guess,” Cal agreed. “Probably a large one.”

  “They’re definitely on a boat then,” Rachel said, clenching one fist atop her knee.