We’ll pull camera footage from nearby structures.
Nothing.
He seemed almost… relieved. Like the existence of the email had smoothed over all the rough edges for him.
And that’s where something inside me wavered. Not anger. Not yet. Not even mistrust. Just a creeping dissonance. This wasn’t how I remembered him responding to uncertainty.
Astrid hugged her elbows, shoulders collapsing inward. “I don’t understand. This still doesn’t sound like her.”
Carson’s tone softened infinitesimally. “I know it’s unsettling, Dr. Thompson. But it’s not uncommon for young adults to make impulsive decisions in moments of stress.”
Something in me twitched at that—old muscle memory from a very different case. He’d used a different vocabulary then. More urgency. More gravity. But maybe that was because Gwen was only fifteen. He’d said that himself the night before.
Still.
The ease with which he placed this email into the “voluntary departure” column… it didn’t match the man I’d built my childhood faith around.
Astrid’s breath hitched. “It still feels wrong.”
He nodded, but it was the kind of nod that acknowledged emotion, not evidence. “It often does.”
His eyes flicked to mine—measuring, almost cautious.
Did he expect me to agree with him? Or did he remember the girl who’d shown up at the station every day for weeks demanding updates?
Either way, the distance in that look told me something important: He didn’t want me questioning this too hard.
That’s where the first real crack formed. Not because he seemed dismissive. But because he seemed… certain. Too certain. As if he’d already decided the shape of the story before hearing all its pieces.
That certainty was the exact opposite of the man I remembered from Gwen’s case, who hadn’t rested, who hadn’t let up, who hadn’t allowed convenience to stand in the way of possibility. A man who once told my aunt, We’ll chase every lead, no matter how small.
Now he was implying that there wasn’t a lead to chase.
Astrid made a strangled sound, and Carson’s expression shifted into that controlled sympathy again.
“I understand you feel blindsided, but I’m simply relaying what my officers observed.”
Astrid’s fingers curled into fists at her sides. “And the ferry? You said you were checking that, too.”
“We checked the manifests. There’s a ticket purchased under Priya Shah’s name on the first ferry out, the morning after you last saw her. Credit card on file matched the one she used to pay her rent.”
Astrid looked like he’d slapped her. “That doesn’t?—”
“One of the deckhands we spoke to thinks he remembers seeing her in line,” Carson continued smoothly, skating over Astrid’s protest. “Young Indian woman traveling alone, carrying a backpack and rolling suitcase. It’s not a perfect confirmation, given the number of visitors we see this time of year, but it’s consistent with the rest of what we’ve found.”
Consistent. Evidence lined up in a neat row. If I’d been reading it in a case file, it would have looked tidy. A little too tidy.
“Then why didn’t she answer her phone?” I demanded. “Why send an email instead of calling Dr. Thompson directly? She had time to buy a ticket, pack a suitcase, board a ferry, and write a formal goodbye to her advisor, but she couldn’t spare a five-second voicemail?”
Carson’s mouth thinned. “Ms. Reilly, we can’t extrapolate intent from the absence of a phone call. People handle stress in different ways. Sometimes they avoid tough conversations.”
“Yes, sometimes they do,” I agreed, heat rising in my chest. “But we also both know how often emails like this get used to create the illusion of choice in situations where there isn’t any.”
“Madden.” Astrid’s voice was a warning and a plea.
I ignored it. Once I got going, it was hard to stop; that had been both my greatest asset in court and my biggest liability in life. “You’re telling us she conveniently packed up, bought a ticket, vanished on the earliest ferry, and fired off a canned email to cover her tracks—right after a night where she was supposedly just working quietly at a bar and then failed to show up for the job that determines her future?”
Carson’s eyes cooled a few degrees. “I’m telling you that there is no evidence of a crime. No sign of a struggle at her apartment. No reports of distress on the ferry. No witnesses indicated she left the island with anyone against her will. Every data point we have suggests she made a sudden decision to leave. People do that, Ms. Reilly.”
