Rawlins deflated a bit, but Murphy knew she would have to tread lightly with this guy, or he would request his lawyer, which would do nothing to expedite the investigation. She stared at Rawlins, waiting for him to continue.
“Yes,” he started, “we missed our flight. We’re rescheduled for a later one.”
“What happened?” Rawlins looked nervous at the question, so she probed further. “From ticketing, I was told your entire party was here, so what caused you to miss the flight?” Of course, she already knew the answer from the Peregrine staff, but she wanted to see how this guy would respond.
“One of our party’s members went missing,” he said.
She thought he was doing an excellent job of selecting each word carefully, which wouldn’t speed things along. “Okay, Mr. Rawlins, let me start by saying I already know most of the story from Peregrine Airlines. I need you to fill in the pieces of the story from your side. My goal here is not to cause a scandal. I’m here to investigate why a plane you were supposed to be on just exploded in the sky.”
“Do you think it was terrorism? Were we the targets?” he asked.
“We are still waiting for our forensic experts from across the country to arrive in New Orleans. Until they survey the debris field and start piecing the plane back together, who knows what caused the accident? As for you being targeted, I have no reason to suspect this had anything to do with you. I still have to check every potential avenue. You weren’t the only ones to miss the flight, which is normal. But, you were the largest group who missed it.”
Rawlins motioned to the table where he’d been sitting with another gentleman. Murphy pulled out her notebook as they sat down.
“Agent Murphy, this is Ron Hightower, the band’s manager,” Rawlins said.
“Good to meet you, Agent Murphy,” the man said as he extended his hand.
Murphy took his hand and shook it firmly. “So, tell me what happened.”
Rawlins and Hightower spent the next few minutes filling in Agent Murphy about their entire morning leading up to Ethan’s disappearance, then the explosion.
“So, you do not know where Ethan Bond is right now?”
“No,” Hightower said. “We have no clue where he is. Our security team was working with airport security to find him when all hell broke loose.”
Murphy jotted a few quick notes in her notebook before Rawlins asked, “Any chance he was on the plane?”
“There’s always a chance, but Peregrine didn’t have a record of him boarding,” Murphy informed the gentlemen.
“Thank God,” Hightower responded. “Sorry… I know that sounds horrible, considering how many people died. I don’t know what we’d do if he’d been killed.”
Murphy spent the next few minutes getting more details from the men before proceeding to interview the boys in the band, the bodyguards, then the senator. Everyone kept asking her questions she simply didn’t have answers for yet. She understood everyone was a bit freaked out and wanted to know what was happening. Still, it was too early in the investigation to have any theories.
After wrapping up the interviews, she returned to the airport security suite, where she’d left her partner. She approached the door with a giant yellow sign that read ‘Authorized Personnel Only’ and knocked loudly. A guard opened the door, and she held up her shield. The man glanced down before standing back and letting her into the room.
“Find anything, Agent Harper?” she asked as she entered the room. The room was abuzz with people and energy. People were scouring every second of the video, trying to find clues.
“Come over here for a second,” Harper said. Harper may have been eleven years older than Murphy, but he looked like a fit man in his late thirties. His well-fitted black suit highlighted his trim runner’s physique. “I may have found something related to the boy band situation.”
“Really?” Agent Murphy asked as she walked across the room. “Why were you looking for a missing person?”
“Wasn’t intending to, but we caught something irregular and started tracking it.” Agent Harper walked Murphy through a series of camera shots.
“What should I see here?”
“Watch the shoes,” Harper said.
Murphy studied the video streams of the boy band arriving at the airport. She paid attention to the shoes of everyone as they went through security. “Okay, what am I looking at?”
“Look at Ethan Bond’s shoes.”
“Can you zoom in?”
“Sure,” Harper said as he motioned for the tech person at the computer terminal to enlarge the video feed.
The image that filled the screen was a pair of generic-looking white sneakers. She spent a moment taking in the details.
