For a moment, I only sat there with my mouth hanging open. Who was I kidding? This was Dax. Of course he was well informed about shit that even half the upper brass didn’t know about.
“Uh, no, actually. I’m on Hatterwick. Involved in a missing person’s case of a young woman the chief of police believes has just gone off on her own.”
I all but heard his interest sharpen. “You don’t think so?”
“Evidence doesn’t line up.”
“Lay it on me.”
Dax listened as I took him through it. When I’d finished, he whistled. “One of these days, Carson’s gonna piss off the wrong person with his lackadaisical approach to law enforcement.”
“May I be around to see it when it happens.”
“You need me to see what I can dig up in terms of an electronic trail for this girl? Figure out if the email could’ve been spoofed or whatever?”
“Yeah. It won’t be admissible, but we’re not trying to get a conviction. We’re trying to find a missing girl before something awful happens to her.”
“I’m in. Give me everything you’ve got on her.”
I reeled off Priya’s name, her previous address, phone number, email address, and everything else Astrid had given me.
“All right,” Dax said. “Give me a second.”
There was a pause. Keys clicked faintly on the line. I stayed quiet, waiting, phone pressed to my ear, eyes tracking the waves down on the beach where they rolled in with steady inevitability.
“Okay,” he said at last. “Phone’s not active. Battery’s either dead or it’s been powered off.”
I hadn’t really expected anything else, but the confirmation hit harder than I expected. “Last location?”
More clicking. A longer pause this time.
“Last ping hit a tower servicing the ferry terminal.”
“When?”
“Little after six in the morning yesterday.”
I closed my eyes. Busy. Public. And the last place Priya had allegedly been seen. What did it mean that it was the last place her phone had pinged?
“And the email?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m checking that now.” Another beat. “It wasn’t spoofed. Header matches the device. Whoever sent it had her phone in their hand.”
I dragged a hand over my face. “So either she sent it herself?—”
“—or someone had possession of the phone,” Dax finished. “Yeah.”
The implication sat between us, heavy and ugly.
“That’s the quick triage. Anything deeper than this—texts, email content, whether someone was leaning on her—that’s going to take real time. I’ve got something sensitive I need to wrap tonight, but I’ll dig in properly tomorrow.”
That was far more than I’d been hoping for. “Any light you can shed will help. I appreciate this, man.”
“No problem. Anything I can do to take down the fuckers of the world. Best to Sawyer and Willa. I’ll be in touch ASAP.”
He’d clicked off before I could say another word.
“He says hi to both of you. And we’ll see what he comes up with on the rest.”
