Astrid rubbed at her temples. “She doesn’t write like this. Not to me. She calls me Astrid. She includes memes. She sends me turtle GIFs.” Her voice wobbled. “If something had happened at home, she would’ve called. She knows I would’ve understood. I told him that.”
“Carson?” I asked.
“Yes.” Her gaze slid to me. “They did a welfare check at her place this morning. Said most of her personal stuff was gone. Clothes, toiletries, electronics. No sign of a struggle. Then Carson comes in here and tells us she was on the ferry manifest, and acts like the email ties up the bow on the whole thing.”
I straightened slowly. “Ferry manifest?”
“He says she bought a ticket on the first ferry out yesterday morning,” Madden said, voice clipped. “Credit card on file matches the one she used to pay her rent. And a deckhand thinks he remembers seeing her in line.”
“’Thinks,’” I repeated.
The word was doing a lot of work.
Astrid pushed away from the desk, standing because sitting was clearly too passive for all the emotion zinging through her body. “Young dark-haired woman—he said Indian, but who knows for sure—traveling alone, backpack and rolling suitcase. That’s what the deckhand told them.” She threw her hands up, helpless. “Have you seen the tourist traffic on that dock? That describes half the people getting off the damn ferry in July.”
An exaggeration. But still, I could picture it. The terminal jammed with families and couples and groups of college kids, everyone lugging gear and coolers and tote bags, faces blurred by sun and motion. One tired ferry worker trying to sort tickets and keep an eye out for safety issues, not memorize faces.
“And all of this together was enough for him to decide she left voluntarily and stop looking,” Madden added.
I leaned my hip against the file cabinet, letting the metal bite into my thigh while I processed. Email. Card charge. Vague witness ID. Apartment that may or may not have been packed by the time cops got there.
On paper, all of it added up to a neat, plausible narrative.
I’d seen neat, plausible narratives lie before. And something in all this was niggling at me.
“Who let them in for the welfare check?”
Astrid hesitated. “He didn’t say. The landlord, I assume.”
“I spoke to her landlord yesterday. Maria. Remember what I told you last night? She said the bed was rumpled, and most of Priya’s stuff was still there.”
“Oh my God,” Astrid murmured.
Madden’s fingers dug into her own arms, pressing the fabric of her shirt tight against her skin. “So either she didn’t look properly, or Carson’s officers didn’t, or somebody’s decided to… reinterpret what they saw to fit what they want to believe.”
“I’m not saying anyone’s lying,” I said carefully. I’d learned early on that accusing cops of dishonesty, even obliquely, shut down conversations faster than a closed fist. “But I am saying the story seems to have changed overnight.”
“Do you think that’s enough to get him to reopen the case?” Astrid asked. “The police didn’t know what she told you yesterday, and I’m so tired I didn’t think of it while he was here.”
I thought about the way Carson had looked walking to his car. Settled. Perhaps even relieved. Not the face of a man who’d want his authority challenged without iron-clad evidence.
“He’s not exactly my biggest fan. I doubt he’d take anything I have to say seriously. Maybe if we speak to Maria again and clarify what she saw.”
Silence fell for a moment, thick enough that even the muffled pump noise from down the hall seemed to fade. Outside the small window, the sky was a flat, washed-out blue, too bright and too blank.
Madden’s gaze slid to mine. “We’re going to need more.”
Against my better judgment, I asked, “What did you have in mind?”
“Emails can be spoofed.” The words came out like she’d been holding them in for hours and finally let them go. “Accounts can be accessed. People can be coerced into typing what someone else tells them to say. This email proves only that a message came from her account. Not that she sat there and carefully crafted it. And even that’s not a guarantee if you have the right people with the right skills.”
Astrid swallowed hard. “You think?—”
“I don’t know what I think,” Madden cut in. “I just know that every part of this triggers my bullshit detectors. The timing. The vagueness. The way it all fits so neatly with the narrative Carson already wanted.”
Her voice was rising. Not to a shout, but to that contained courtroom intensity that makes a jury sit forward.
I’d seen that before. Not from her—never from her—but from other lawyers I’d worked cases with. And against. The ones whose blood pressure shot up when something didn’t line up.
