“Yeah,” he said. “That part, I’m one hundred on.”
“Did you tell anyone?” Madden asked. “Besides the guys on the dock.”
He shook his head. “Who’s gonna listen? ‘Hey, Chief, your favorite stoner deckhand saw some shit in a dark alley while he was high.’ They’d laugh me out of the station. Or write me up for something else.”
He wasn’t wrong about how that would go. Not with Carson.
“How did Lacey find out?” I asked.
“Told some of the crew next day,” he said. “I guess it made the rounds. She asked what was wrong. I told her. She’s… you know. Decent. Didn’t act like I was making it up.”
Madden slid her phone back into her pocket. “Can you take us there?” she asked. “Show us exactly where you were, where they were.”
He winced. “Now?”
“Now,” I said. “While you’re talking about it.”
He shifted on the bench, heel tapping faster. “Look, I wanna help. I do. But I’m not… clear right now. You want details to stick, I should… maybe not be like this.”
It was a fair point. Sloppy recall now would give Carson ammunition later if this ever came up in any formal context.
“When’s your next run?” I asked.
“Tonight,” he said. “Sea Breeze goes out at eight. I gotta be here by seven.”
“And you’re back?”
“Depends on what we pull,” he said. “Midnight, one.”
“Tomorrow morning,” Madden said. “After you dock, eat something and sleep an hour or two. Then call us. We’ll meet you behind Home Port, and you can walk us through it in daylight.”
He hesitated. “You really think that’ll make a difference?”
“If this girl is the one who’s missing,” Madden said, “every detail matters. If she’s not, someone else was attacked, and that matters too. Either way, you’re the only one who saw what happened. We need you clear.”
Something about you’re the only one landed. His shoulders slumped.
“Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Tomorrow. I’ll find you.”
I rattled off my number; he punched it into his phone with clumsy fingers.
“Don’t disappear on us, Willie,” I said. “We’re trusting you.”
He nodded hard. “I won’t. I swear. I should’ve done more that night. I’m not screwing this up again.”
I believed him. I also knew how easily good intentions were lost between now and sunrise.
Fourteen
MADDEN
We didn’t speak at first as we walked up the ramp from the Sea Breeze to the main dock. The old boards creaked under our feet, the sun hitting that bleak hour of midday misery that made you question your life choices. From here, Home Port sat, a simple slab of weathered gray between the pilings—not menacing, just… ordinary. Which somehow made it worse.
I kept my voice low. “So, on a scale of one to ten, how useful was that?”
Rios huffed a breath that resembled a laugh. “Five. We’ve got confirmation of an assault, a general time frame, and a rough description of both the victim and the attacker.”
“And a reminder that Carson has no idea any of this exists because nobody trusted him enough to make a report.”
