Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Angus had just reached his desk when the email arrived, the attachment flagged as Priority in response to the missing persons case number he’d cited in the request. He opened it and read it while standing, leaning over the desk with his jacket still on.
The prepaid number appeared six times.
Angus wrote the prepaid number in his notebook and called it from the desk phone. It rang eight times and went to a generic voicemail with no name recorded. He hung up without leaving a message.
He ran the number through the system. Registered to a prepaid carrier, purchased with cash at a convenience store in Augusta fourteen months ago.
No subscriber name. No address. A dead end in the conventional sense—but the purchase location and timing sat in him like a splinter.
Augusta more than an hour’s drive from Weyport.
Someone had driven to Augusta to buy a phone with cash fourteen months ago, around the time Cobb arrived in Weyport, and had since been using it to receive calls from Jonah Holt.
He wrote that in his notebook too. Then he called Miguel.
“Phone records are in,” he said. “Six calls to a prepaid, all outgoing from Jonah, the last one was the same afternoon he went quiet. I’m at the office. I’ll pull what we can on the south dock unit myself. Meet me at the workshop in an hour?”
“I’ll meet you there,” Miguel said.
The south waterfront dock ran along the lower edge of the harbor, below the main working piers, a stretch of older corrugated units that housed the smaller marine trades—outboard repair, sail making, the kind of cash businesses that ran on reputation and handshakes rather than storefronts.
The units were close together, separated by narrow service lanes, the smell of diesel, fiberglass, and saltwater constant regardless of the wind direction.
Cobb’s unit was halfway along the row. A rolling steel door, padlocked, a single small window set high in the right wall, dark inside. No sign. No business name on the door or the frame. The padlock was a heavy-duty model and appeared to have been recently oiled.
Miguel was already there, standing to one side of the door with his notebook out, when Angus arrived.
“Lease is through a property management company in Bangor,” he said. “Payments by money order, dropped at their office in person each month. No bank account, no electronic trail. The unit has been in Cobb’s name for sixteen months.”
“Who owns the property management company?”
“Working on it. It’s registered to a holding company. There’s another company behind that one. It’ll take time to unwind.”
Angus looked at the padlock. He had no warrant and no grounds for one—yet. Cobb was a person of interest in a missing persons case, not a suspect in a crime. Angus photographed the door, the padlock, and the window, then moved to the back of the unit.
A narrow service lane ran behind the row, just wide enough for a small vehicle.
At the back of Cobb’s unit was a steel door, also secured with a padlock.
A ventilation grille sat low on the wall.
Through it came the faint smell of engine oil and something chemical he couldn’t identify.
He crouched and peered through the grille.
The interior was dark, but he could make out the shapes of equipment—a workbench, tools hanging from a wall rack, and the corner of what appeared to be a tarp-covered object on the floor.
He straightened and walked back around to the front of the row.
The unit next door had its rolling steel door halfway up, with a radio playing inside. Angus knocked on the frame.
The man who appeared was in his forties, heavyset, with grease on his arms up to the elbows, and a look that said he’d been interrupted mid-job and was willing to be polite about it for about thirty seconds.
“Ted Garver?” Angus said.
The man looked at his badge and nodded.
“You know the man in the next unit? Ray Cobb?”
Garver leaned against the doorframe. “Enough to say hello. Paid his rent, kept his hours, didn’t bother anyone. That’s all I really know about a neighbor on this dock.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Monday morning. He came in early—before seven, which wasn’t unusual for him. He kept odd hours. Worked until about noon, then left. Hasn’t been back since.Two days now.” He paused. “I noticed because he usually leaves the light on when he’s coming back the same day. Light’s been off since Monday.”
“Did he say anything to you Monday morning?”
“We didn’t speak. I saw him arrive, that’s all.” Garver’s eyes moved to the padlocked door and back. “Something wrong?”
“Routine inquiry,” Angus said. “One more question—in the time Cobb’s been here, did you ever see anyone come to visit him? Anyone regular?”
Garver thought about it. “Not regular. There was a car once, early on. I couldn’t even tell you exactly when—maybe the first few months.
Parked at the end of the road for a while in the mornings.
I noticed because there was no reason for it.
” He shrugged. “Thought nothing of it at the time. Figured it was someone waiting on a delivery.”
“What kind of car?”
“Dark colored, four-door, I think. I don’t know.”
Angus thanked him and walked back to where Miguel was standing in the front of Cobb’s unit.
“Cleared out Monday,” he said. “Same day I ran his name and got the watch alert.”
Miguel looked at him. “He knew within hours.”
“Within minutes, more likely. The alert was automated. The moment I ran the search it was logged. Someone was notified.”
“Who has access to that kind of alert in the state system?”
“Law enforcement. Or former law enforcement and knows how the system works.” He said it as a statement of fact, nothing more. He wasn’t ready to go any further than that without something in hand.
Miguel wrote it down. His expression was careful in the way it sometimes became when he was processing something he wasn’t sure how to file yet—not doubt, more concentration, like that of a methodical man encountering a fact that didn’t fit neatly into the shape of the case so far.
Angus photographed the sight line from the end of the dock road to the front of Cobb’s unit. From that position you could see the unit clearly. You could also see, at an angle across the water, the roofline and parking lot of the Weyport Sheriff’s Office.
He noted it, photographed it, and kept moving.
Miguel was waiting by the truck, phone still in his hand from a call of his own. His voice had changed when he spoke—the careful concentration from earlier replaced by something flatter. More controlled.
“State oversight office just called the department,” he said. “They've flagged an anomaly in the case file. They want to discuss it with you.” A pause that lasted a beat too long. “Today, Angus. They said today.”