by Matt Lincoln
“I’m sure they’re thrilled about that,” Holm snorted.
“They’re not happy,” Diane confirmed, “but we can’t be sure there aren’t more mules still on board who weren’t affected by whatever killed everyone else. Furthermore, there’s a high probability that whoever’s responsible is lurking around as well. People who are used as drug mules typically don’t do so of their own free will. Whoever’s in charge wouldn’t let so much valuable merchandise cross national borders unsupervised.”
“Got it,” I replied as I stood up. “We’ll head down there now.”
“I’ll send the address to your tablets,” Diane said before Holm and I walked out of her office.
My heart began to pound with anticipation as we headed out of the main office and toward the elevators. After so long sitting behind a desk, this was just the kind of case I needed to get my blood flowing again.
3
Ethan
The Ruby of the Seas was absolutely enormous. It was one of those massive ships used on long luxury cruises. I could see it from a distance as we were pulling up, and now that we were standing on the dock next to it, I couldn’t even see the top of it as it towered over Holm and me.
“We should talk to the captain first,” I suggested as Holm and I walked toward the group of officers standing on the other side of the yellow caution tape encircling a large perimeter of the dock in front of the ship. Nosy onlookers and reporters toting heavy cameras and microphones alike vied to get a look at the ship, plying the guarding officers with questions about what had happened.
“Excuse me!” I called to one of the officers as we pushed our way past the crowd and up to the edge of the tape.
“Can I help you?” One of the officers eyed us with suspicion.
“Agents Marston and Holm, from MBLIS,” I replied as I dug my badge out of my pocket to show him. “We’re here to speak to the captain.”
“Just a minute,” he replied gruffly before taking a walkie-talkie off his hip and muttering something into it. A few seconds later, he nodded and walked over and moved the caution tape to let us through. One of the reporters tried to sneak in behind us, and the officer practically shoved her backward. “Do not come a step closer!”
The reporter gasped and glared at the officer, who just turned his back on her and turned to us.
“Damn vultures,” he muttered. “They come flocking any time there’s some kind of tragedy as if someone else’s death is entertaining. Anyway, my sergeant’s waiting for you just past the entrance.” He pointed to an open doorway at the side of the ship. “Just through there.”
“Thanks,” I replied as Holm and I walked away from him.
While he might have been a little rough with the reporter, he had a point. People had died here, and crazed vigilantes had jumped the gun and seriously injured at least two people they thought were responsible. How people treated these kinds of things like a sideshow attraction annoyed me.
A uniformed officer stood just through the doorway inside the ship, giving out orders to a set of officers. I assumed by the way he was overseeing the rest of the officers that he must be the sergeant. As soon as he was done speaking to the officers, he turned to look at us.
“You must be the federal agents. I’m Sergeant Barnes,” he greeted us as he moved forward to shake our hands.
“Agent Marston,” I replied. After Holm introduced himself as well, I got straight down to business. “What information do we have so far?”
“Well, it’s a bit of a mess, to be honest with you,” Barnes replied as he put his hands on his hips. “A lot of conflicting information, you know how eyewitness reports can be. People get confused, and biases get in the way. We even had an angry mob attack one of the cooks and some kid.”
“We heard,” I noted with a frown. “What happened?”
“They thought he was responsible,” Barnes scoffed. “Guess a rumor got out that he’d poisoned the food, and that was why folks were dying. Went and beat the poor guy up, a bunch of them against one, damned cowards. Then this eighteen-year-old kitchen assistant tried to stop them, and they beat him up too! I tell you, it’s insane, the things people will do to one another.”
“That’s horrible,” I agreed. Unfortunately, violence was a common human response to fear. It was the same reason perfectly good people would dunk someone else underwater in an attempt to save themselves from drowning. They weren’t evil. Their survival instincts would just blind them from making logical decisions.
“Anyway,” Barnes continued, “It’s been hard to sort out what exactly happened because of all the stories we’ve been getting. I’m assuming you’ll want to speak to the witnesses yourself, but I have to warn you, you might have some trouble getting a clear answer out of some of them.”
“We’ll just have to try,” I replied. “But first, we’d like to speak to the captain.”
“Of course,” Barnes replied with a nod. “I’ll take you up to the bridge then.”
As he led us through the ship, I noticed that it seemed remarkably empty for a vessel that had just finished a cruise.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“All the passengers were told to remain inside their rooms until instructed otherwise,” he explained. “They are not happy about it, and honestly, I can’t blame them. If it were me, I’d be ready to get the heck off this thing after what happened.”
“All the more reason for us to get to the bottom of this,” I replied.
Of course, with the ship being so large, it was impossible for the police to keep everyone out of the common areas completely. Despite having been told to stay put in their cabins, there were still a few guests scattered around here and there throughout the hallways and lower deck of the ship. Some of them were laden down with bags and luggage as they argued with the police officers who were attempting to maintain order. I knew that it was imperative for us to work quickly. We couldn’t keep these people here indefinitely, not unless we started making arrests, and we couldn’t realistically arrest several hundred people.
“The captain and some of the crew are in here,” Barnes explained as he came to a stop in front of a door. “Most of the rest of the crew have been instructed to hang tight in one of the ballrooms. There’s a pretty strong possibility that someone on board was connected to the crime, so I assume you’ll want to speak with all of them.”
“That is the plan,” I replied as he pushed the door open. It sounded like a daunting task, speaking to so many people, but he was right. The odds that someone could sneak nearly thirty drug mules onto a ship undetected without help on the inside were pretty slim. It was important that we not leave any stone unturned.
The door opened into one of the control rooms, where the captain and several other officers, judging by their uniforms, sat at a table with a pair of police officers, speaking in hushed tones.
“Captain Havisham,” Barnes spoke up as the three of us stepped inside. “Sorry to interrupt. I've got a couple of gentlemen here who need to speak with you and with the rest of the crew.”
“That’s alright,” the aforementioned Captain Havisham replied tersely, the tone of his voice a clear indication that it was anything but alright. “We were just about finished providing our statements… for the third time now. I suppose once more can’t hurt.”
He had a serious expression on his face, and I could tell he was tired of all the questioning that naturally came with a case like this. It was normal with civvies who got caught up in crimes and weren’t used to all the investigation that came with it. Informal interviews, formal interviews, witness interviews, suspect interviews, it could potentially go on and on depending on how close an individual was to the case. Of course, we tried our best to limit the number of times we questioned people, but it wasn’t always possible, especially when multiple law enforcement bodies were involved.
“I’m sorry to have to make you rehash everything again,” I said to the captain as I stepped forward to shake his hand. �
�I know it can get pretty draining. I’m Agent Ethan Marston, and this is my partner, Agent Holm. We’re with MBLIS. We’re taking this case over beginning now.”
“Federal agents?” The captain raised his eyebrows at us as he stood from his seat. “Well, hopefully, this means we’ll be able to settle this matter more quickly. I have several hundred souls on board this vessel that are eager to get home to their loved ones.”
“I understand,” I replied sympathetically. At the same time, I was carefully analyzing Havisham’s behavior and body language. It was obvious that he was eager to get himself and everyone off the ship, though the reason why wasn’t yet clear. Sure, it was possible he was genuinely anxious about what had happened and just ready to get away from it, but it was also possible that his eagerness to leave was borne out of a sense of guilt or fear. If he was involved in this, then it would make sense that he’d want to make himself scarce. “We want everyone to get home safe as well, but in order to do that, we need to make sure there aren’t any more threats still on board the ship.”
“Let’s talk then,” the captain replied, sounding just slightly less sour than before.
“To begin with,” I started, “we’d like a manifest of all the passengers, and we specifically need information concerning the ones who died. We need to know where they were from and how they’re connected to each other.”
“I can get you that right now,” one of the crewmen still sitting at the table chimed in as he turned to his computer.
“I’ll let my first mate handle the manifest,” Havisham replied, “but I can tell you right now that all the passengers were from the United States, or at least that’s where they started. The cruise set sail from California seventeen days ago, and we check IDs at every stop to ensure that only passengers are coming on board.”
“It’s possible someone might have snuck on,” Holm suggested. “It’s a big ship and a lot of people. I’m sure a person could slip by in the crowd.”
“Perhaps.” Havisham frowned at him as he crossed his arms across his chest, evidently displeased by Holm contradicting him. “But I can assure you that thirty people could not have slipped by unnoticed. And in any case, we already know the identities of all the victims. They all have valid tickets.”
“I guess that rules out the stowaway theory,” I mumbled, my head spinning as I thought through every possibility. “That can’t be, though. Maybe I should check with Bonnie, but I’m pretty sure a person can’t carry drugs around inside of them for seventeen whole days.”
“Maybe that’s why they died,” Holm muttered.
An uncomfortable silence fell over the room then. It was a strange situation, to be sure, and one that didn’t make sense no matter what angle we considered.
“Okay, I’ve got the records here,” the first mate said as he turned the computer screen toward us. I walked toward the table and bent down to look at it. On the screen was a list of names, ages, and the type of ticket each person received. It wasn’t the most in-depth information, but it was a start.
“Could you please send this information to me?” I asked. “We can have our techs look more closely into their identities. For now, though, I’d like to speak to the rest of the ship’s staff before we move on to the passengers. We need to get some first-hand accounts of what exactly happened yesterday.”
“Everyone is gathered in the Premier Ballroom,” the captain replied. “The police are speaking with them now, actually. You can do your interviews in there.”
“Thank you,” I replied as he turned to lead us out of the room. Holm and I followed, as well as Barnes, the two other crewmen, and the police officers that had been taking their statements when we arrived.
As we walked through the ship once more, I couldn’t help but marvel at just how huge it was. I could easily picture someone getting lost on a vessel this big or perhaps hiding. Barnes had said that the passengers had been instructed to stay inside their cabins until further notice, but there was almost no way the cops would be able to keep an eye on upwards of five thousand people. If whoever was responsible for this was still lurking around, I had no doubt that it would be fairly simple for them to sneak by unnoticed.
The room that Havisham brought us to was enormous. There was a stage at the far end, and the majority of the ship’s staff currently occupied several rows of chairs in the center of the room. During cruises, this room was probably used to put on shows or performances, but right now, there was no sense of mirth in the air. The tension was palpable, and I could tell that everyone was anxious.
“Let me know whatever you need,” the captain insisted. “Anything that will get my crew and my passengers home safely that much faster.”
“Thanks,” I replied as I glanced around the room at the gathered staff members.
It was a unique conglomeration that you wouldn’t normally see all in the same room together. Crewmen, cooks, housekeepers, custodians, and even a few people whom I assumed must be entertainers or something based on the fact that they weren’t wearing any kind of uniform. As the captain walked down the length of the room, I caught a flash of movement behind the semi-closed curtains up on the stage. I could see a man in an officer’s uniform walking around, and just behind him was a woman wearing a blue uniform with the ship’s name on it.
“I think this is going to take a while,” Holm murmured to me as he looked around at the gathered crowd.
“I think you’re right,” I replied. “And this is just the staff. We still need to speak to the guests.”
“We’d better get started then,” Holm remarked.
I felt a sense of trepidation as I looked across the room. It would likely be dark by the time we got off this ship.
4
Ethan
I sighed deeply as the man I’d just interviewed walked away. We’d been at this for hours now, long enough that we’d finished speaking to all the staff that claimed to have seen something. Heck, we even stopped for lunch before continuing on to the guests.
In order to make the best use of our time, we’d decided to only speak with people who had either witnessed the deaths firsthand or claimed they had seen something suspicious on the ship prior to the deaths. Of course, like with anonymous tips, everyone seemed to think that they had some important piece of vital information to give to us. In reality, most of what we heard ended up being a lot of the same. It was a perfectly normal day on board the ship when someone suddenly collapsed in the dining room, or in the hallway, or in the bathroom, etc.
Then there were the crazy ones. The people who claimed that this was definitely some kind of government conspiracy or terrorist attack and that they were sure that X, Y, or Z were behind all of it. The first few of those were mildly entertaining, but it got old pretty fast, and it was ultimately just more time wasted.
So far, we’d been able to gather that the first death occurred at around ten in the evening. We weren’t sure exactly which of the passengers died first since eyewitness reports conflicted, but the earliest ones all seemed to hover around that time. The victims all died the same way as well, suddenly falling to the ground without warning, sometimes convulsing for a few moments before dying.
There were a few anomalies, however. Apparently, while most of the victims had died within a few minutes of one another, a few had held out for as much as half an hour later. According to reports, several people on board had reported feeling ill after the chaos began. While most of those cases were likely psychosomatic and the result of people believing that poisoning rumor, three others had actually died. All three had started to shake and sweat profusely before suddenly collapsing. Autopsy reports on those victims indicated that they had cocaine in their stomachs as well.
I was still deep in thought when a low voice broke my concentration.
“It’s fine, mom!” the voice groaned. I could tell that whoever was speaking was male, and he sounded young. “I told you I saw something weird! The cops thought it was important, so I need to talk to them!”
My ears perked up at that. After the first hour or so of interviews, the police officers began screening the passengers to see if any of them actually had anything important to tell us. While I would have preferred to be thorough and interview every single one, that just wasn’t feasible under the time constraints that we were working under. If nothing else, it helped to weed out the people who were just making things up or throwing around wild accusations.
There was some more grumbling on the other side of the curtain before it was suddenly yanked to the side. A lanky boy who looked like he was still in high school stomped toward me. Behind him, I could see a short, thin woman with curly red hair. She was holding a little girl and frowning up at the boy.
“Hey,” the kid greeted me as he plopped down into the chair that the police had set up for the interviews. “Uh… the police told me to come to talk to you. You’re like an FBI agent or something, right?”
“Kind of,” I replied as I kept the corner of my eye on the woman. If the kid had important information, I wanted to talk to him, but I didn’t want to run afoul of laws concerning minors.
A second later, she sighed and walked toward one of the chairs near the front of the ballroom before taking a seat. I took that to mean that she was at least resigned to letting her kid talk to me and turned back to the boy.
“My name is Agent Marston. I’m an agent with MBLIS. We investigate crimes that cross international borders.”
“So, that’s why you’re here and not the FBI?” the kid asked. “Cause we’re on a boat? And everyone died when we were out in the ocean.”
“That’s right.” I nodded as I looked the kid over. He wore a thin hoodie, and his hair was disheveled. He also had heavy bags under his eyes, as though he hadn’t slept a wink last night. I supposed I couldn’t blame him if he really had witnessed something yesterday. “What’s your name?”