Missing Person

by Matt Lincoln

  “Why isn’t the camera swaying then?” Ramirez asked, bringing up a good point.

  “Maybe it’s on a chicken’s head,” Cal suggested, and we all turned to blink at them, confused. Cal colored slightly, shoving a hand through their hair. “It’s a super cheap and easy way to keep a camera steady while filming on a boat. The chicken’s neck naturally compensates for the sway. Ward is probably not using a chicken, but there’s equipment that does the same thing.”

  “How do you know these things?” Ramirez wondered, but it was a rhetorical question, and he waved away Cal’s attempt to answer.

  “More importantly, what are we going to do about this?” I asked loudly, bringing the conversation back around to what actually mattered. We all turned to look at Rachel, who was still staring at the computer screen with her expression frozen somewhere between absolute rage and the desire to fall apart all over again.

  It took her a moment to realize that we were staring at her, and she blinked, slowly dragging her awareness back to the forefront of her mind.

  “This stays between us,” she said, and with each word, her certainty grew. Her spine straightened until it was a rod pressed to her back, and she tilted her chin up as she looked back at us, her eyes like chips of stone within her face. “Don’t mention this video to Graham, Barrett, or even Linda Reyes. They don’t need to know.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” I asked. I was hesitant to question my boss, but at the same time, I was worried that her heart was overruling her head in this.

  Rachel jabbed her finger at the video. “We can use this. Ward wants revenge on Dowell. If we can find Dowell, he might know where or how we can find Ward. If we tell Graham, she’ll just squander this chance, and we won’t be able to chase the lead down ourselves.”

  I glanced at Lex. She met my eyes and shrugged.

  “Okay,” I said finally, since it seemed no one else was going to make a decision. “We’ll keep it to ourselves, and we’ll work to locate Dowell.”

  “Is it true?” Lex asked Rachel. “Did Dowell betray Ward?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel sighed, slumping back in her chair. Her bouts of determined energy came and went like the tides, and when they were gone, they took the rest of her energy with her, leaving deep bags beneath her eyes and a haggard droop to her mouth. “If he did, Amherst never mentioned it to the rest of us. Maybe he just caught wind of what was about to go down and decided to cut his losses.”

  “If Dowell did turn on Ward, he’d be more likely to help us, won’t he?” Cal pointed out. They’d already started sifting through their various databases, looking for any mention of Dowell’s current location.

  “Maybe, maybe not. It’s hard to say. We’ll just have to try.” Rachel rubbed at her eyes and then stood, pushing herself out of her chair like ties were binding her to the seat. “Let me know what you find. Oh, and at least one of you should go back upstairs, so it doesn’t seem like we’ve all disappeared.”

  I watched her mount the steps and shuffle out of the lab. Her very boots seemed to sink into the ground as if they simply wanted to sink out of the world and take her with them, and I hated to see the downtrodden cast of her shoulders. We couldn’t let her down.

  10

  Meg Shoals hurried after her CO as they left the MBLIS agents at the little sun-soaked cafe, glancing back over her shoulder one last time before the crowd swallowed them up. The soft yellow sunlight didn’t seem to touch the little group, though no umbrella sat above their heads. It was as if the trio created shadows of their own that weighed on their shoulders and pressed them deeper into their seats.

  Meg felt for them, and for Rachel Bane in particular. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose a child like that. The fear and the uncertainty must have been eating away at Director Bane, carving up her insides into some unrecognizable tangle of grief. Meg hoped she and Linda would be able to help, and she hoped they could do it quickly.

  Meg realized she’d slowed down some and picked up the pace to catch up with Linda. The woman had a stride like a wave crashing against the shore, relentless and fast and perhaps a little unaware of where her traveling partner was.

  “So what are we going to do?” Meg asked once she was walking beside Linda rather than behind her.

  Linda held up the sheet of paper Director Bane had given her for a second and then tucked it away again before the wind could snatch it away. “We start combing marina registries for boats with these call numbers. They’ll have to have docked for fuel somewhere.”

  “And if it’s not one of those?” Meg asked.

  “We’ll worry about that part when we come to it,” Linda said. She turned her head to grin at Meg, her teeth very white against her tanned face. “One step at a time, right?”

  “Right,” Meg agreed, and she thought it to herself one more time as Linda turned her attention back to clearing them a path through the crowd with the sheer force of her presence. Meg had a tendency to overthink things. She knew this about herself. She got caught up in the big picture, and that blinded her to the path to the end result. It was one of the things she was working on.

  The two of them crossed the last street separating the city from one of the marinas on the Lake Pontchartrain, and a wave of briny air hit Meg in the face. She breathed deeply, and some tension eased from her shoulders when she saw the blue-gray waves of the water way up ahead. The Coast Guard had one base on the lake and another on the Mississippi River near where it snaked through the French Quarter, both kept separate from the civilian docks so that they could go about their business unimpeded. People dressed in dark blue uniforms buzzed around the docks and up and down the various sized ships like a well-oiled machine, a few pausing just long enough to salute Linda before they continued on their way.

  “We should have grabbed lunch somewhere,” Linda said, patting her stomach as she angled toward the dock where their ship was berthed. She dug out her wallet and passed Meg a twenty-dollar bill. “Here, go grab us some sandwiches from the marina deli and meet me in my cabin.”

  Meg made a face but took the money. She hated the deli sandwiches. They were always either too dry or absolutely soggy with sauce, and she was sure they were left in the glass display cases well past their best-by dates.

  She and Linda split, and Meg broke into a jog as she headed toward the large white building just outside the security gate, which served as a deli, informational center, and a miniature museum for those curious about the Coast Guard. The automatic doors slid open to admit her, sending a wash of cool air across her face, and Meg wasted no time stepping into the small deli that was just off the main lobby. The woman behind the reception desk nodded to her, and she waved back, though she couldn’t conjure up the woman’s name.

  Pickings were slim at the deli counter. Meg didn’t understand why it was so hard to make the sandwiches to order, but for whatever reason, corporate wouldn’t allow it, and when the deli was out of a certain kind, they were out until the next day. Which meant that today, Meg’s options were egg salad, ham and cheese and mayo, or something akin to roast beef. She got the ham and cheese for Linda and could tell even through the plastic that the bread was already going soft and then plunked a bag of chips and a pop down on the counter for herself. She forked over the cash, got Linda’s change, and then she was out the door with a little white paper bag in hand, squinting in the bright sunlight as she threaded her way back through the security gate and across the busy dock toward the ship that Linda was CO of.

  It was a long, white hulk of a machine, docked at the very far side of the base while they worked on loading it with supplies and fuel for their next journey out to sea. They were set to leave next week. MBLIS had caught them just in time.

  Meg started up the brow to the ship’s deck, the paper bag swinging from her hand. The trio of agents had been an odd bunch. Obviously, Director Bane was the head of the office, but there was a casual nature to her relationship with the other two, though that might have be
en mostly due to the odd situation they were in. Either way, it was very different from the way the Coast Guard was run. Meg and Linda were friends, but Linda was definitively in charge, and Meg was happy to defer to her. But Director Bane had been okay with that Agent Greyson running the conversation, though he had seemed a little hesitant to take charge.

  He was kind of cute, she thought, and then felt herself flush red. She didn’t see that kind of curly hair on a lot of men, though he clearly would rather it stay tame and slicked back across his head. He had vividly blue eyes, the color deep and sharp, and she could have sworn that it changed with the shifting sunlight. Meg found herself looking forward to meeting with him again.

  She pushed the thought away as she left the deck and threaded her way through the passageways toward Linda’s cabin and office. No time to ideal crushes when there was so much at stake. She could daydream when she was off duty.

  Meg rapped on Linda’s door and let herself in after the other woman called for her to enter. Though it was the largest cabin on the ship, Linda’s office still felt cramped and small since her wooden desk was just a little too large for the space it was crammed into. There were several short bookshelves behind the desk, a large chart of Lake Pontchartrain and the outlying gulf hanging on the wall above them. The desk itself was neat, with only a few personal effects on the top. The main one was of Linda’s old crew back in Puerto Rico, all of them smiling at the camera as they slung their arms around each other. Meg knew that Linda missed them, despite her love of her new job.

  “Lunch,” Meg said unnecessarily as she set the paper bag on the desk and began to pull everything out. She put Linda’s sandwich, chips, sparkling water, and the change in a little pile and then retreated to the extra chair with her own stash.

  “You didn’t get anything?” Linda asked, eyeing Meg’s oh-so-nutritious choice of Lays and a pop.

  Meg shrugged. “I can’t stand those sandwiches.”

  Linda gave her a vaguely disapproving look but didn’t say anything else. Proper nutrition was a cross Linda would die upon, and Meg was still trying to figure out how to match her habits to Linda’s recommended plan.

  Linda unwrapped her sandwich, made a face at the soggy bread, and then booted up her computer, spreading Director Bane’s page out on the desk.

  “Let me go get my laptop,” Meg said and hopped up from her chair to rush from the office, abandoning her chips on the plastic cushion. As XO, she had her own little cabin, and she snagged her laptop from the bag sitting neatly on her desk chair, hoping that it had enough charge. The thing was old and becoming rather unreliable.

  She hurried back to Linda’s cabin and moved her food to the desk so she could sit down. Linda was still waiting for her brick of a computer to connect to the ship’s internet and was munching her way through her sandwich with the dogged determination of someone who was more than used to eating cafeteria mush.

  “I split the list in two,” Linda said as Meg opened her laptop and pressed the power button. Linda handed Meg half of the page Director Bane had given them, literally torn down the middle in one neat line, and Meg eyed it critically as she crunched a chip. How likely was this search to turn up fruit? The MBLIS agents hadn’t told them much about this Simon Ward character, but Meg was more than willing to bet that he was bad news.

  Once their laptops were connected, Linda and Meg got to work chasing down those identification codes. A few of the boats on Meg’s list had changed hands more than once in the years since Ward had been put away. She did find one that had docked in Orange Beach, Alabama, which wasn’t super close to New Orleans, but it was still way closer than the ones docked in, say, Europe. She highlighted its entry on the list and marked it for further investigation. Several of the boats seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, perhaps left in dry docks to rot away to nothing. The IDs might have been changed, but that was an awful lot of effort, and most people didn’t bother.

  “Any luck?” Meg asked Linda once she was done with her list.

  Several hours had passed, and Linda rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “Maybe. One of the fishing boats on the list actually docked here about two weeks ago. It’s probably too small to be the one we’re looking for, but it’s still worth following up on. You?”

  “The yacht formerly known as the Sun’s Passion was in Orange Beach…” she checked her dates, “last month. It’s changed hands twice since Ward was arrested, and it’s pretty far away, but it’s the best I’ve got.”

  “We can start with the fishing boat,” Linda decided. “It looks like the owner’s renting a mooring at the South Shore Harbor Marina. We can check it out in the morning.”

  “Should we let the MBLIS agents know?” Meg asked.

  Linda pursed her lips, thinking it over. “Let’s get some more substantive information first. Then we’ll fill them in.”

  “Is there anything else you need this evening?” Meg asked as she closed up her laptop and gathered it in her arms. “Otherwise, I’ve got a few other duties to attend to before bed.”

  “Go,” Linda said, waving her hand toward the door. “Sorry to keep you so long.”

  “That’s okay. I want to help Director Bane. What time do you want to leave in the morning?”

  “0800,” Linda replied, and Meg gave her a quick salute.

  “Alright. I’ll see you then.”

  The morning came early, as it always did, but Meg was up and at it as soon as her alarm went off. She had her mornings down to a science: wake up, get dressed, make her rack, brush her teeth and comb her hair, and then it was off to the mess deck to grab a bit of toast and a cup of coffee. It took her thirty-four minutes exactly (recently trimmed down from thirty-six minutes), and so, at 0800, she was knocking on Linda’s door just as she finished off the last sip of coffee from her to-go cup.

  Linda opened the door, still doing up the final button on her shirt, and Meg passed her the extra cup of coffee she’d grabbed from the mess deck.

  “You’re a lifesaver,” Linda said, gratefully accepting the cup. “Thanks.” Linda shut her door and took a sip of the coffee, face prepped to cringe when she burned her tongue, but she relaxed when she realized it had cooled down sufficiently in the time it’d taken Meg to get to her cabin.

  They set off through the ship together, the other crew members stepping out of the way to let them pass, saluting Linda crisply as she went by. It was a cloudy day when they stepped out onto the main deck, the sky heavy and promising rain later in the day. Humidity laced the air and pooled around the ship despite the breeze off the water’s attempts to push it away, and Meg began to sweat despite the lightweight and breathable material of her uniform. She loved wearing a uniform. It made getting ready in the morning that much easier since she didn’t have to worry over what to wear.

  Meg usually took public transport, but Linda had a car parked on the base’s small lot, and she clicked a button on her keys so that the headlights would flash and remind her where she’d left it. They climbed into the Jeep Wrangler, and soon enough, they were puttering along the edge of the lake toward the South Shore Harbor Marina.

  Meg loved watching the city in the mornings. In the early hours, there was usually still mist clinging to the roads and the corners of the buildings, and she liked to watch the sun burn it away. She liked the sleepy way the cars and people moved, still collecting themselves for the day, and she liked catching the first whiffs of baking bread or simmering stock as the restaurants began to open and prepare for their customers. Something was comforting about the start of things, and she much preferred it to the thrall of the night lights.

  They drove to the marina in silence, listening to some morning talk show that Linda liked while Meg stared contentedly out the window. The South Shore Harbor Marina was considerably larger than their base, and the long, wooden docks stretched out into the water like fingers draped across the back of a couch. Boats of every shape and size bobbed against the dock
s or the moorings further out in the lake, still protected by the breakwall. There was a lazy sort of feel to the marina—people ambled about as they prepared to take their boats out for the day, passing coolers up onto the deck, stowing ropes, pushing open the windows below deck. There were considerably fewer people out and about than usual, what with the looming rain, but maybe they hoped the storm would dissipate before it actually hit the city.

  “The boat we’re looking for should be in slip thirty-four,” Linda said as she hopped out of the car and slammed the door.

  Meg climbed out more slowly, scanning the marina for anything that seemed out of place. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for: men in black walking around furtively, maybe, or an imposing boat with storm clouds hanging over it.

  With a start, she realized that Linda had walked off without her, so Meg hurried to catch up, breaking into a light jog as she crossed the parking lot.

  “Let’s say this boat is connected to Simon Ward,” Meg said once she was walking beside Linda. “What’s our plan? Do we engage ourselves or step back to call MBLIS? Won’t that tip Ward off that someone’s onto him?”

  “We’ll have to see how far we can push,” Linda answered after a moment’s thought. “Given the boat’s size, it’s highly unlikely that Ward himself will be anywhere near it, but maybe the owner will have some information on where he’s been or where he’s going.”

  “And if there’s no one on the boat?” Meg asked.

  “Then we wait a while, or we come back later. We can always ask the harbormaster to keep an eye out and call us when the boat is occupied.”

  Linda and Meg stepped up onto the dock at the marina’s far end, and it swayed just slightly under their weight. The wood was gray, bleached of color by the sun and the water, and Meg’s steps rolled easily to accommodate the dock’s wobble as they walked further out onto the water. This close to shore, the lake was murky and still but for the lap of the wind across the surface. It looked heavy, like it would wrap algae tentacles around the limbs of anyone foolish enough to touch it, dragging them down into the grasping mud and fallen rocks.