Missing Person

by Matt Lincoln

  “I think Rachel put the box back here,” Lex said, fishing out her keyring so she could unlock the door.

  “Do we have merch?” I asked. “I love merch.”

  “I think it’s just some generic sweatpants and t-shirts,” Lex said, and I folded the corners of my mouth down in disappointment.

  Lex flicked on the light, and we stepped into the cramped evidence lock-up room. We’d have to expand it at some point as our agency grew, but since we were still getting off the ground, there was plenty of space for any new cases we might get. Lex glanced around and spotted a cardboard box on the far end of the metal rack closest to us. We squeezed down the narrow aisle, and Lex flipped the lid open, revealing a stash of extra clothes.

  “Perfect,” I announced. We found things that were closest to our sizes and went to change. It felt great to be in dry clothes again, without damp fabric rubbing against my skin. I stared at my wet socks and shoes with absolutely no desire to put them back on. “Hey, were there shoes in there?” I called to Lex, who was changing inside the lock-up room while I was outside.

  “I don’t think so,” she replied. “Are you decent?”

  “Yeah.”

  Lex stepped out with her wet clothes bundled under one arm and locked the gate up again. I looked down at my shoes and socks again. My coworkers would just have to deal with my bare feet.

  We headed back downstairs, and I found a plastic bag to dump my clothes in and left them on the floor. Graham, Rachel, and Cal were all in the conference room. The marshal sat at the very head of the table, calmly examining her nails. Cal looked like they wanted to sink right through the floor and down to their lab, slumped so far down in their chair that I almost couldn’t see them over the table, and I was also sure they were going to throw out their back doing that. Rachel sat beside Cal with her hands folded very carefully on top of the table, as if her ramrod posture was the only thing keeping her from launching herself at Graham’s throat.

  I looked over at Lex as we made our way toward the conference room.

  “Do you think she believed us?” I asked quietly, barely moving my mouth.

  “Yes?” Lex replied. “But that might just be wishful thinking. It was a good story. Hopefully, it’s enough.”

  I hoped that, too. I opened the glass door to the conference room for Lex and then followed her inside. It was almost hard to step up to the table. There was so much tension in the air that it was like pushing through the shallow end of a pool.

  Lex and I sat across from Rachel and Cal, and, almost as one, we turned to look at Marshal Graham. She picked off a bit of lint on her sleeve, making us wait just a few seconds longer, and then lifted her gaze to regard the four of us.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the Ward case,” Graham began, and my stomach tightened, sure that she was about to accuse us of lying to her. I did my best to keep the worry off my face, but I had no idea if it worked. “I’m concerned that Ward hasn’t reached out for any demands. With normal kidnapping cases, the kidnapper wants something and sends their demands fairly soon after the crime. So why hasn’t Ward?”

  I kept my gaze from sliding toward Rachel because we were headed toward the territory of yet another lie.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, and Rachel cast her eyes at the table, slumping her shoulders, despondency oozing off her.

  “Hm.” Graham leaned back in her chair, propping one ankle up on her other knee. “Very odd. I’ve been working to track down his old partner, Frances Dowell. Hopefully, that will turn something up.”

  “If you’d let us help--” Rachel began, but Graham cut her off with a sharp jerk of the hand.

  “No. We’ve been over this before, Director Bane. Several times. I won’t have your emotions getting in the way of this case. My decision is final.”

  Rachel’s face looked absolutely murderous, darker than the storm that had just passed through. I half expected her to leap right over the table and punch Graham in the face, but she kept a hold of herself, flexing her fists on top of the table. I put my hand on her shoulder, and when she looked at me, I offered her a smile.

  “How about we go get some lunch, okay?” I suggested. “I’m starved after my high-speed boat chase.”

  “Me too,” Lex agreed.

  “I suppose I could eat,” Rachel agreed. She slanted a glare toward Graham that clearly said the marshal wasn’t invited.

  Graham seemed unperturbed by the animosity billowing off Rachel, spinning her chair away from us so she could look over her whiteboards. It was an obvious dismissal, and it stung me that she was so quick to throw out our help. Any guilt I felt over deceiving her was long gone. If she wouldn’t trust us, well, then we wouldn’t trust her.

  14

  Just before we left the office to get lunch, one of Barrett’s officers arrived with the evidence bags of heroin and a report on the contents. I sent him to the third floor to speak with Ramirez, who was still questioning the drug dealer. Then Cal, Rachel, Lex, and I got out of there before Graham could think up any more questions for us to lie about. We all piled into Lex’s car since the seats in mine were still damp. I gave Rachel shotgun and climbed in the back with Cal, who popped a single earbud in. I could hear punk rock pouring out of the other bud.

  Lex picked a restaurant for us, and we had no trouble getting a table since the lunch rush was well past. The four of us slumped in our seats and stared at the menus. I’d put my wet shoes and socks back on and was very unhappy about it.

  “So what now?” Lex asked. The server had come and gone to get our food orders, and our dark mood had made her nervous, her usual customer service voice failing her as we gave her our requests in drab tones. She seemed glad to hurry off to her next table, pad of paper in hand.

  “We do the same Graham is doing,” Rachel said, a bitter note surrounding the marshal’s name. “We look for Frances Dowell. But we do it better, and we do it faster.”

  “You’re not thinking about doing as Ward said, are you?” I asked her cautiously, worried about the answer.

  Rachel flicked her eyes toward mine but couldn’t hold my gaze when she answered. “Of course not.”

  While Rachel stared at her menu, I looked over at Cal and Lex. Cal had a nervous expression on their face, like they were watching their friend’s parents argue, and Lex was studying Rachel, probably coming to the same conclusion I had.

  “Even if you do as Ward says, you won’t see Malia for weeks. Maybe even months,” Lex said in the same careful tone that I had used. It really felt like we were walking on eggshells around Rachel. “Ward said he wouldn’t release her until after Dowell was behind bars. Who knows how long that could take?”

  “You think I don’t know that?!” Rachel snapped, drawing the attention of the surrounding tables. “Of course I do. It’s all I’ve been thinking about every second of every day. At a certain point, we’re going to run out of options, and if we take too long to decide, Ward might get fed up and hurt my daughter, and what kind of mother would I be if I let that happen?!”

  “Either way, we have to find Ward,” Cal said. They spoke so quietly that the rest of us almost didn’t hear them, but their soft tone also pulled a portion of Rachel’s rising anger out of her. She looked over at Cal, blinked, and then glanced around the restaurant, realizing for the first time that people were staring at us.

  “That’s our first step,” Cal continued. “We can worry about what comes next later.”

  Rachel nodded slowly. Her shoulders slumped, and she leaned forward to rest her head against her arms, folded on the table. “You’re right. And I’m sorry for yelling. You’re all doing the best you can, and you have no idea how much I appreciate it. I just get so lost in the entirety of the situation that I can’t see the steps.” Rachel sighed, shoulders heaving. Her words were muffled by her arms and the wood of the table, and I had to strain my ears to hear her. “Maybe Marshal Graham is right. I’m too close to this. I can’t see it properly. I’ll only get in the way and get Ma
lia hurt.”

  Our food arrived before any of us could answer. The server saw Rachel’s head on the table and didn’t know how to react. She passed the plates out to the rest of us, and I nudged Rachel with my foot until she hauled herself up, flopping against the back of her chair. Tear tracks streaked down her cheeks, and her eyes were red, rumpled strands of hair framing her face. The server quickly set Rachel’s sandwich down in front of her, then hesitated, licking her lips nervously.

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

  I looked around the table at the despondent and uncertain faces.

  “Some alcohol,” I decided.

  “What kind?”

  “Any kind,” I told her.

  The server swallowed, nodded, and then left us alone. I felt bad for being that weird, problematic table, and I made a note to make sure she got a large tip when we left.

  Rachel picked at her food but didn’t actually eat much of anything. None of the rest of us really did either. I’d been starving not fifteen minutes earlier—getting shot at through the rain took a lot out of a person—but now that the food was actually sitting in front of me, it looked about as appetizing as a bucketful of scraps.

  The server brought back a tray of beers for the table, but those wound up untouched as well, and after twenty minutes, we gave up and paid the bill. I ordered a sandwich and fries to go as a sort of peace offering for the marshal. Maybe if she liked us a little better, she wouldn’t look so closely at our comings-and-goings.

  “Do you want me to take you home, Rachel?” Lex asked as the four of us climbed into her car. All signs of the morning’s storm had dissipated but for some lingering moisture along the greenery and the haze of humidity in the air.

  Rachel looked out the window for a long moment while Lex started the car and waited for an answer.

  “I suppose so,” Rachel said finally. “I’m not much good to you at the office, and I could use some sleep.”

  “Okay,” Lex agreed and pulled out onto the road with Rachel directing her which way to go. I watched the streets go by through the window and wished Lex would turn on the radio so we’d have something to fill the silent car.

  Rachel’s home was in a quiet neighborhood that was maybe a ten-minute drive from her ex-husband’s residence. The street was lined with cute little bungalows and plenty of shade from the old trees, stretching their branches in every direction like ancient, watchful sentinels. Two kids clambered happily up the trunk of the tree at the end of the block with not a care in the world or a lick of fear over how far away the ground was.

  Lex parked outside of a white bungalow in the middle of the block. It had pale blue accents and a small, three-season porch just off the door. There was a flower box in one window and a garish lawn gnome guarding the front walk, but otherwise, there wasn’t much in the way of landscaping. The curtains were drawn so that the whole place felt dark despite the sunshine and the bright exterior. I wondered if it was just my fuller understanding of the situation that made the place seem so sad, or if the other neighborhood residents saw the same thing.

  I leaned forward from the back of the car, so my head was between the two front seats.

  “Do you want someone to stay with you?” I asked Rachel.

  “No,” Rachel said, staring at her house like it was the last place she wanted to be. “I’ll be okay. Thank you, though.”

  “Alright then,” Lex said, though I could tell by her tone that she wasn’t sure it was a good idea to leave Rachel alone right now.

  Rachel climbed slowly from the car, and we watched to make sure she got up the front walk and through the door okay. She paused on the steps and looked back at us, one hand raised in farewell before she disappeared inside.

  “It’s time to pull out all the stops,” I said to Lex and Cal, still watching the now closed door. “For Rachel.”

  “For Rachel,” Cal and Lex agreed quietly, and then Lex turned the car around and got us back to the MBLIS office.

  We walked through the door in a row, and I split off from the other two once we reached the main room, headed for Graham’s occupied territory while Cal and Lex walked toward the stairs down to Cal’s lab.

  I knocked on the open glass door and waited until Graham waved me in before I entered, feeling like an intruder in my own space. Graham stood before her two whiteboards, staring at all the information written or tacked there, one hand slowly rubbing her chin.

  “I brought you some lunch,” I said awkwardly and set the bag down on the table between us like some kind of offering at a damaged altar.

  Graham turned around, surprised, her eyes flicking to the bag and then up to my face. “Oh. Thank you. That was very considerate of you.”

  As she reached for the bag and drew it toward her, I stepped closer to the whiteboards, hoping to get a better look at everything written there. One board was devoted to Ward and the other to her search for Dowell.

  “Any luck so far?” I asked casually.

  Graham paused in the act of unwrapping her sandwich and looked back at her boards. I could see the start of bags under her eyes and wondered if she’d slept since she got here. “The lack of any demands or ransom is frustrating,” she began. “Ward’s been in prison so long that he’s lost most of his old contacts and business partners, though he’s too smart to go back to them anyway, knowing that we’d be watching. He’s starting from scratch, so that makes him harder to track.”

  “Or does that make him easier to track?” I countered. I hoped that if I acted as a sounding board for Graham’s ideas, she’d tell me something that we could use in our own investigation. “What does he need to start from scratch?”

  Graham set her sandwich down, only a few bites taken out of it, and sat down, leaning all the way back in the chair. “Money, obviously. Transport. A base. An escape route if things go bad.”

  Ward was on a boat, so he’d managed to combine three of those four things into one.

  “So where would he get the money?” I asked.

  I studied the board on Dowell while Graham thought about my question. It had his last known address written near the top, somewhere up in New York, but that had been checked already by some of Graham’s people, and then there was a list of some of his known contacts, the ones he had in common with Ward marked with a red star. I recognized most of the names from the file Rachel had given us, including Kant, the state senator, and the Wall Street mogul I’d harassed when we first heard Ward had escaped. There were only two names without a red star—Rick Mann and Sasha Richards—and I made a note of them, repeating them three times to myself to lock them in my mind.

  “There are plenty of places he could get the money,” Graham answered, drawing my attention away from the whiteboard. “We know that he most likely used legal means since we haven’t heard of recent robberies or hold-ups in the area. Loan sharks, a new source he made while he was in prison… there are a lot of options.”

  I made a quiet humming sound in the back of my throat, eyes back on the whiteboard. Dowell had managed to disappear without a trace before the final raid on Ward even went down as if he’d had prior knowledge. Would Amherst know anything about it? From what was on the whiteboard and what Rachel had told us, I gathered that Amherst had dropped off the radar in the past couple of years. Graham had a phone number written down for him, but there was a note beside it stating she didn’t know how recent the number was or if it was even still in use. She hadn’t been able to contact him, but maybe we’d have better luck.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” I said as Graham picked up her sandwich again. “Don’t hesitate to let us know if there’s anything we can do.”

  Graham nodded distractedly. Her eyes locked on her neat notes, and I could practically see the gears turning within her head. I backed out of the room. I needed to tell the others what little I’d gleaned from our chat. Lex and Cal were still downstairs, and I’d yet to see Ramirez since we’d returned from our short-lived lunch.

  I
hurried down to the lab to ask Cal to run those two names and the phone number through their fancy software, and my still slightly damp shoes were mostly silent on the stairs as I descended. I could hear Lex and Cal talking as I approached.

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” Lex asked.

  “I am an open book,” Cal replied.

  “How did you know that you were queer?”

  I stopped on the second to last step. I could see Cal and Lex inside the lab, seated in front of Cal’s computer array, but the two of them had their backs to me and had yet to notice my approach.

  “It was a lot of little things that I didn’t really notice on their own until there were an awful lot of them, and I couldn’t ignore them anymore,” Cal said, voice thoughtful. “Why?”

  I began to back up the stairs, my feet as quiet as I could make them. This was not a conversation for me to walk in on. My tenuous leads could wait until the two of them were done. I headed over to my computer but didn’t sit down at the desk, just drummed my fingers on top of the stack of files at the end as I thought about what to do. I should check in on Ramirez and the drug dealer I delivered to him. Maybe they were still upstairs in an interrogation room.

  I headed up to the third floor. One of the six doors was still closed, so presumably, Ramirez was still questioning the man I’d brought in. They’d been in there a while, so either the guy was a tough nut to crack (unlikely given my previous interactions with him), or he had a lot of information for Ramirez.

  Would Ramirez appreciate me interrupting him? Probably not. I should just go back to my computer and see if I can dig anything up on Amherst, Mann, or Richards. Before I started back down the steps, Ramirez opened the door and stepped out into the hall. He blinked, surprised to see me, a manilla folder clutched under one arm.

  “What are you doing up here?” he asked.

  “I came to check in with you. See if you need any help,” I said, feeling suddenly awkward and regretting my decision to come up here.