The Severed Thread

by Dione C. Suto

  Winston was a professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. They had met on one of Aunt Gracie’s many excursions with the Peace Corps. She and Winston were kindred spirits, both driven to help people suffering from the corruption and political apathy of unhealthy governments. It was only in the last few years that they had been spending more time in the immediate Philadelphia area since Winston was now teaching full time.

  “She is trying to be brave but she has been pretty much crying nonstop since yesterday,” she told me. That I was not able to be there comforting her just gave me one more reason to loathe Liam McCallister.

  “Did she get any sleep?”

  “Not much.” I could hear her sigh. “I don’t think she dozed off until close to one thirty this morning and by then she was exhausted.” Aunt Gracie sounded tired too.

  “Thank you, Aunt Gracie… for being there for her,” I said. “I have to run into the office to make sure everyone knows what to do with the things Jason was working on and then I will be over. I’m sorry I’m not at the house already.”

  “It’s okay dear,” she said. “You’ll get here when you get here. We aren’t going anywhere.”

  Traffic was light so I decided to make a quick stop at the coffee shop that was about five minutes from the office. Even though I had loaded up on tea earlier, today seemed like a good day for a little extra caffeinating. The parking lot was full of likeminded people looking to charge up before work. Thankfully a twenty something blond in a lime green VW pulled out just as I was about to give up on finding a spot.

  There was a line to order but nothing unexpected given the time of day. My mind started to wander as I gazed over the clusters of coworkers and co-eds sitting at the tables and club chairs. My eyes settled on the back of a mouse brown head that seemed strangely familiar. Across the table from him were two men I didn’t recognize, one of which instantly made me think of a weasel. His dark eyes were a bit too close set and they darted around the room, vigilantly watching the other patrons. The other man was stockier with a hooked nose and thin lips which were moving rapidly as he spoke to the man whose back was to me.

  The line was slowly moving forward and I kept glancing over to see if the man had turned his head my way. It was starting to look like I would have to wait until after I got my drink to see the face that went with the mousey shock of hair.

  Two more people placed their drink requests and then it was my turn to order. Minutes later my latte was ready. I collected my drink from the barista and turned to leave, having nearly forgotten about the mystery man.

  “Abigail!”

  Ah… Harvey Keltan. I should have known that hair belonged to him. My morning was just getting better and better.

  “Hello Harvey,” I said, forcing my lips into a polite smile. Harvey worked for the Port Authority and it turned out that he had also attended the same university as Jason. He was always bringing up all the good times they had shared at college but I got the feeling that Jason barely remembered him as more than an acquaintance.

  The real issue I had with Harvey was that he tended to be more aggressive than I cared for when it came to offers to take me to dinner, movies, shows – the list went on and on. You name it and he had invited me to it. At first I had felt a little bad about turning the guy down but really, I was not interested. At all. Then as he got more tenacious, it became annoying. Now I just said no on principle.

  “I saw you on the news last night,” he was saying. “You were totally covered in blood.” I couldn’t hide my grimace at his callousness.

  “Yeah, that was me,” I said, sure that everyone in the place could hear me gritting my teeth. What a jackass.

  “I was sorry to hear about Jason.” I glanced over his shoulder towards the table where he had been sitting but the other two men were gone. I turned my attention back to Harvey.

  “Thank you.”

  “When is the funeral?”

  “I’m not sure yet, I’m helping my mother sort out the details later today.”

  “Let me know when you figure it out. I would be happy to escort you.” I think my mouth actually dropped open. Did he think I needed a date for my brother’s funeral? What the hell was wrong with this guy?

  “We plan on running an obituary in the paper,” I replied stiffly. “The date and time will be listed there.” I had no idea what the plan really was but that sounded good. He was seriously delusional if he thought I was making a special effort to notify him of the plans. His mouth thinned briefly in annoyance which he quickly covered with a sanctimonious smile.

  “I’ll be sure to look for it.” He looked so strange standing there with that self-satisfied smile on his face. Why was he looking at me that way? “Let me know if you need anything. I would be happy to help in any way.”

  “Thank you but I think we have it covered.” I needed to get out of here now. This guy was giving me the creeps. “Bye,” I said making a bee line for the door. I don’t know if he responded and frankly, I didn’t care.

  Even with my stop at the coffee shop, I made it into the office by eight. As I pushed through the double doors and passed the security guard I caught a glimpse of his surprised expression. I received a similar but more verbal greeting from the receptionist when I got off the elevator on the tenth floor.

  “Ms. Lassiter, we did not expect to see you this morning!” Johanna said, jumping up from behind the reception desk and giving me a motherly hug. “I’m so sorry about what happened to your brother.”

  “Thank you Johanna,” I said offering her a brave smile as she released me. Johanna was a vivacious human in her late fifties that had been with the company for nearly as long as Sal.

  “I’m only here for a few hours. I need to make sure we have someone filling in for Jason,” I explained. “I’ll be leaving around noon to go to my parent’s house to help with the arrangements for the funeral.”

  “I imagine it will be a big event,” she said nodding sympathetically. Unfortunately she was probably right. It would be a media circus between the manner of my brother’s death and all of the high profile attendees my father’s position would draw. I was not looking forward to juggling that along with McCallister’s demands.

  “You’re probably right.” My shoulders sagged. Did I have the stamina to make it through the next few days? “I just need to start by getting through this morning though. Hopefully everything will sort itself out as we go.”

  “Sounds like a good plan. What can I do to help?” she immediately asked.

  “Can you get me Sal on the phone and tell Samantha that I need to see her?”

  “I will get right on it.” She immediately moved back to the other side of the reception desk to start making calls.

  “Thanks,” I called out as I headed towards my office.

  I quickly checked my email which was overflowing with condolences from friends and business associates. There appeared to be no need to notify anyone of Jason’s untimely death since it was being played out in gruesome and ofttimes inaccurate detail by every major media outlet across the country. I probably needed to draft a standard reply for business associates and have Johanna send it out – one more item to add to an ever growing list of things that needed to be done as soon as possible. My phone rang and I was relieved that it was Johanna with Sal on the line.

  “Sal.”

  “I’m sorry Abigail,” he said, sounding miserable. “I just can’t believe he is gone.”

  “Me either. It was… horrible,” I told him, nearly breaking down. He was quiet on the line a minute.

  “It will be alright girlie,” he said tightly. He had been calling me that since I was little. “We will get through this somehow.”

  “I know,” I said taking a shaky breath. I needed to pull us back to why I called him in the first place. “Getting through the immediate upheaval is why I had Johanna call you,” I told him. “I need your help running the shipments until we can find Jason’s replacement.” The word replacemen
t left a foul taste on my tongue even though I knew I didn’t have a choice.

  “I figured you might.”

  “I hate to ask it but I really need you to start today if you can. I have to go help mom with the funeral arrangements after lunch.”

  “I can be there by ten thirty.”

  “Thanks Sal, I will see you then. And Sal,” I said before he hung up, “you are a lifesaver.” In this case it might be literally.

  Before I could even put the phone back in its cradle, Samantha came in with a cursory knock on my open door.

  “How are you making out after yesterday?” she asked.

  “About as good as can be expected, I guess. Especially after starting the day with a wakeup call from dear old dad followed by a chance meeting with creepy Harvey Keltan at the coffee shop.”

  “Ooh,” she winced in sympathy, “sorry to hear that.” She flopped into the chair across from my desk. “How is your mom holding up?”

  “She’s not, really,” I said. “I’m thankful that Aunt Gracie is there to hold the pieces together until I go over later.”

  “When are you heading over?”

  “I have to leave here by twelve-fifteen or so to make it to their house by one. We are meeting with the funeral director. I just wish this mess with McCallister would go away so I could help her more.”

  “Tell me what I can do.”

  “Well,” I said, trying to decide where to start. “I received a text earlier with the tracking number for the container that transported McCallister’s missing item.”

  “Jason stole something of McCallister’s from a shipment?” I forgot that I had not explained much of the details involving the missing Sapphire last night. Everything had been too crazy.

  “Yes,” I replied nodding. “At least that’s what McCallister tells me.” I copied the tracking number onto a piece of paper and handed it to her. “Can you try to track it down for me? I don’t want the container to leave the port. I need to see it as soon as possible.”

  “Okay, I can do that,” she said. “Anything else?”

  “No,” I started to say as something obvious just occurred to me. “Wait, maybe…. I just realized that McCallister said the container had been opened and a new customs seal placed on it. Maybe it wasn’t opened,” I said slowly, thinking out loud. “Maybe it was a different container.”

  “That’s possible I guess,” Samantha replied doubtfully. “But how would Jason fake that if McCallister already knew the tracking number?” That was a good question since the container number painted on the outside of the container was the number used to track it.

  “If the number was similar enough, he could have changed the number on the container without even messing with the customs seal,” I mused. Container number assignment was a complex system that involved multipliers making it hard to tamper with but anything was possible. “Pull the manifest and see if there are any other tracking numbers that are similar to the one I received from McCallister.”

  “I’m on it,” she said before bolting out my door on the way to her office. Samantha was a stickler for details, if anyone could track down the correct container or containers, she could.

  I looked at my watch and was startled to see that it was nine-thirty already. The morning was quickly slipping away but I still had time to take a look around Jason’s office before Sal was due to show up. Maybe there was something in there that would shed light on where the missing cargo was now.

  Jason’s office door was shut but when I walked in, there, standing in front of the windows looking out over the city was Naris. He turned towards me as I stepped into the office and closed the door.

  “I am sorry Abigail,” he said dropping his shoulders. He looked defeated. That was a persona I had never before seen him wear. I had witnessed the protector and the confidant, the friend and mentor but not in all the years we had been together had I ever seen defeat. It made me uncomfortable to see him that way.

  “I am too Naris. I should not have blamed you yesterday,” I admitted. “The whole thing was too overwhelming to process. It still is….” I let the sentence trail off.

  “I came to tell you that I cannot interfere in your agreement with the vampire.” Huh?

  “I did not think you would interfere,” I said cautiously because I had hoped for a bit of guidance. I knew how things worked for him. He was my Guardian but he had limits that involved The Plan. Although I suspected that this time there was more to it than his usual boundaries since he had come specifically to point that out. “But just so I’m clear, what does that mean exactly?”

  “It means that you will have to walk the path of understanding in order to unravel the web.”

  “Ah… okay. Is that Guardian-speak for You need to figure this one out yourself?” I asked in a voice heavily laced with sarcasm.

  “That is an analogous interpretation.” He dipped his head in affirmation, his lips tipped up in a small smile.

  “Good to know,” I replied. I had learned years ago that although information from Naris could be cryptic, what he had to say was nearly written in stone. No amount of pleading on my part would change the fact that he could not interfere.

  “Now I think you need to shove off so I can get started on the ‘path of understanding’,” I said dryly, making little finger quotes at him. “Unless of course you have some additional enlightening information for me?” I was already poking through the papers on Jason’s desk while I waited for his laptop to boot up. I never understood why we even got him a laptop in the first place when he refused to take it home with him. A less expensive desktop model would have worked just as well.

  “I have faith in you Abigail Lassiter,” Naris said and in the next instant he was gone. I was warmed by his words but also worried that I might not live up to that confidence.

  Chapter 8

  I spent the next half hour looking through the papers on Jason’s desk, poking through his email and checking the appointments on his calendar, which thankfully he synced with the one on his mobile. I wouldn’t have had access to his calendar otherwise, since the Interspecies Bureau had taken his phone.

  Just when was I despairing that I would find anything helpful in Jason’s office, an excited Samantha came in to tell me she found two containers that fit the criteria I had given her.

  “I checked the manifest, and found the container matching the tracking number you gave to me. Then I looked for a similar tracking number that might be easily changed,” she said breathlessly, handing me a piece of paper with two nearly identical tracking numbers.

  “The only difference between the two numbers is the second to the last digit,” I said, looking at the paper. On the original tracking number the character is a three and on the second one it is an eight.

  “Not too hard to change a three to an eight and vice versa” she mused. “There are two other possibilities but they seemed an unlikely match. They both required two characters to be changed and were not the same type of container as the original.”

  “The containers would have had to be identical for McCallister to presume it was the same one he saw loaded at the port in Panama,” I agreed while thinking the container switching seemed too well orchestrated for Jason. He was impulsive; which might explain why he got involved in this disaster in the first place. Switching two identical containers with nearly the same tracking number required careful planning – definitely not Jason’s MO. There had to be someone else involved, I just needed to figure out who.

  “You know that both containers were refrigerated and carrying bananas, right?”

  “I knew that the missing shipment contained bananas,” I confirmed, nodding. “So I assumed the container was a refrigeration unit.” Bananas had to be either shipped in the refrigerated hold of ships known reefers or in refrigerated containers. Since the Lassiter Storm was not a reefer ship, it made sense that we were looking for a refrigerated container.

  “A container of bananas that was supposed to have somethin
g on it belonging to Liam McCallister,” she said dramatically. “Hmm…. I wonder what that could be?”

  “I’m going to say that I have no idea to what you are referring,” I declared while giving her a stern look. “You need to have plausible deniability.”

  “Alright,” she responded doubtfully. “I know you did not want to compromise Corbin’s ethics but we both know I can handle it.” She leaned towards me across Jason’s desk and whispered, “But just so you know, I can already guess what went missing.”

  “Guessing and knowing are not the same,” I whispered back.

  “I suppose, if you are really splitting hairs.” She rolled her eyes, straightening back up to her full height. “Seriously though, what else can I do?”

  “Make sure neither container is reloaded and if it is, unload it. I need to get into both of them.”

  “You plan on making a Location attempt?” Samantha was one of three people who knew I was a Locator. The list of people I trusted was short and contained my mother, Samantha and Corbin. All people I was certain could keep a secret.

  “I have to at least try.” I didn’t have a lot of time to find the missing Sapphire. Using my Location skills seemed the fasted way to track it down.

  “People are going to think it’s weird that you want to walk around inside two containers, you know. You don’t usually make a habit of doing that kind of thing,” she said wryly.

  “Good point. Can we move them somewhere less obvious?” I asked. “Put them on two trucks and drive them somewhere that I can get into after hours? I don’t know… I’m open to ideas.”

  “I will see what I can come up with.”

  “Thanks Sam.”

  “No problem,” she shrugged before disappearing down the hall to her office.