Barret, page 13
“It wouldn’t normally happen though, would it?” she asked curiously.
“No, it sure wouldn’t. Normally everybody would be checking in and out, and we would all know exactly where people were and what was going on.”
“So, the fact that he was here for breakfast and then wasn’t here later would suggest he’s in his room.”
“Let’s hope he is.” Chef glanced around the almost empty room. A few people were still mingling, picking up drinks and visiting, but nobody appeared to be terribly concerned.
When her phone buzzed a few minutes later, she saw a message from Barret, then looked over at Chef and whispered, “Aw, shit. Xavier’s been found, and he’s fine, but, according to him, nobody’s seen Jerry, the second investigator. Ted’s now raising the alarm for him.”
“Why wasn’t he called out then?” Chef asked.
“He’s probably not on any of the lists because he’s here as part of the base’s investigation team,” she murmured.
“That’s just BS.” Chef pondered that. “I don’t think I’ve seen him all day either.”
She looked at him and then slowly nodded. “I guess I have to agree because I don’t recall seeing him either.”
“So, when did you see him last?” asked a man, his hard voice, coming from behind her.
She spun to see Magnus, his hands on his hips, glaring at her. She glared back. “I don’t know.” She raised both hands in frustration. Then she stopped and frowned. “He was here at breakfast yesterday.”
“And then?” Magnus turned to Chef.
He shrugged. “Yesterday for sure. I don’t know about this morning though,” he replied apologetically. He looked back at Magnus. “Things get a little hot and heavy when it’s just the two of us in the back, and we have to really move it.”
Magnus nodded slowly as he stared around the room. “So, now we have to go door to door and find out when anybody saw Jerry last.”
“But wouldn’t Ted have been the one to see him last?”
“He said he last saw him yesterday, after breakfast but before dinner.”
“But Ted didn’t show up for dinner himself,” Chef pointed out.
Magnus stared, then nodded. “I asked Ted about Jerry myself, and Ted told me that Jerry just hadn’t been feeling great and wanted to give his stomach a day off. It wasn’t a day off really. It was just a meal off.”
“That happens sometimes with the guys, when they feel a little bit tired,” Chef noted.
“Yeah, especially if they’re coming down with something,” Avalon added.
Magnus nodded. “I’ll go door to door, mark down who was there to speak to, and see if anybody has seen Jerry and when and where that was,” he stated. “I’ve got both Egan and Barret helping me, so that’ll be fun.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” she murmured. “If there’s anything we can do, speak up.”
“There is something. Rack your brain for the last time you saw Jerry, and let’s hope it was more recent than yesterday,” he noted, with a grim tone. “If he’s been missing that long, not only do we have a problem in this camp but we’ve got a bigger problem with people not noticing who’s around them. We’ll have to set up a much more stringent tracking system.”
And, with that, he was gone.
*
Barret looked down at the list in his hand and headed to the next room. Two men were assigned to this room. When he knocked, the door opened quickly, as if they were expecting somebody else. He was greeted by double frowns. Barret nodded. “Just checking to see if either of you have seen Jerry at all today.”
“Jerry?” they asked in a reaction that Barret was becoming accustomed to.
Jerry apparently had the ability to be here, yet not be noticed. It was a good trait when it came to being an investigator. However, since the investigation hadn’t really gone anywhere, maybe not the best for his own health. When Barret explained a little more, their faces cleared.
“Right. He’s that older guy, bald head, looks completely out of place here.”
Barret nodded. “He’s an investigator, with many years of experience, and well accustomed to being in the shadows.”
“The shadows are kinda creepy,” the other guy noted sharply. “Particularly right now. We don’t like people who stay in the shadows.”
“And that’s not the question I have for you right now.” Barret kept his tone calm. “We’re missing a man and want to know when that happened.”
“I thought you were missing Xavier,” the first guy said in confusion.
“Xavier’s fine. He’s in his room, just not feeling great.”
“What? More food poisoning?” he asked, with an eye roll.
At that, a third man started to laugh, deeper inside the room.
Barret took note of who else was here. Ralph. “Yeah, I’m glad you guys are having fun with this, but I’d appreciate it if you could just answer the question.”
At that, the first man snapped back to the subject. “I don’t remember when I last saw Jerry,” he stated, “and honestly, since he wasn’t part of our teams, I just blocked him out.”
“Maybe so,” Barret acknowledged, “but it would sure be nice if we had somebody who had seen him more recently, so we would have some idea of where and when he may have disappeared.”
“The fact that he’s gone is a good thing. It’s not as if they were getting anywhere anyway,” the first guy said in disgust. “And now …” Then he stopped and frowned. “Unless he was getting somewhere?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Barret noted, with a hard smile at these men who thought a missing man was more of a joke than a concern. “Let’s hope if you ever go missing, we treat your disappearance with a little less levity than you’re treating Jerry’s.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” Ralph replied, jumping off the bed. “I mean, if he’s really missing, that’s a whole different story.”
“That’s why we’re here, trying to figure out where and when he was last seen.”
They were no help because the three of them couldn’t remember anything. The smell of alcohol hung in the room. Alcohol was not allowed, and several of the rooms had been searched already, so Barret didn’t want to bring up the issue right now. He did put a question mark beside their names, however, and he carried on to the next room. There he found two women, and Katya was one of them. He looked at her and nodded. “Hi, we’re checking to see when everyone last saw Jerry.”
“Jerry?” she repeated, frowning. “God, I don’t know. It’s been, … well, I don’t think I saw him today. I was in the group coming back late tonight, so the dining room was already pretty clear. I don’t know that he even leaves the place, does he?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Barret replied. “Still doesn’t change the fact that I need to know when you may have last seen him.”
“If I saw him, it probably would have been at dinnertime yesterday,” she said. “Otherwise I honestly can’t remember.” She winced. “How horrible is that? I’m sorry,” she added in a thick accent, unhappy at her inability to pull out an answer for him. “I really don’t know, but it wouldn’t have been today and quite possibly might have been dinner last night, but I can’t even say that for sure.”
Barret nodded and moved on. Eventually he met up with Magnus, who was standing in the hallway, staring at his list, his expression one of worry.
“Any luck?” Magnus asked him.
“No, no luck. Nobody knows where he is. Nobody knows when they even saw him last.”
“How the hell does that happen?” Magnus asked in frustration. “I got pretty well the same response.”
“Jerry was very good at fading into the background,” Ted interjected, as he walked toward them from the end of the corridor. “It’s what made him such a good investigator. He could just slide into places, and people would talk freely, without really noticing he was even there.”
“Jesus, but that just brings up another whole list.” Barret hesitated, then leaned forward and, in low voice, asked, “Is there any chance that he may have been making progress on the investigation and was taken out because of it?”
Ted stared at him, then slowly nodded. “We were coming up with some potential conclusions, but we hadn’t come up with the final answer. As you know, we had narrowed down the suspect list,” he replied, turning to Magnus.
“Sure, but that list didn’t get narrowed down very much,” Magnus replied. “Fourteen names were still on it.”
“No, … unfortunately it didn’t, not nearly as much as we needed it to,” Ted agreed, frowning. “So, in answer to the question, it’s possible somebody thought he might have found some answers. Maybe he did talk to the wrong person, but, even if he did, where is he? He never left the compound because he wasn’t into the cold at all. He didn’t grouse about being here, which was helpful, but he didn’t want to be here. He wanted to head home as soon as this job was done, so he was applying himself as diligently as he could. Yet he was also really frustrated that we were getting nowhere.”
“And when you say, getting nowhere, that completely belies what you just said.”
“No, not at all,” Ted argued, raising his hands, palms up. “It’s just that we couldn’t come up with anything concrete enough to give to our bosses. I mean, you have your brass, but we have ours. And believe me. They’re all over us on this because we’ve been here as long as we have and because we’re not finding anything, at least nothing concrete.”
“And yet we’ve found all kinds of things,” Barret pointed out.
“Sure, but nothing that applies to these original cases. I know that some of the brass is looking to just call everything accidents and leave it at that,” Ted admitted, with a frustrated tone. “I’m not convinced of that myself.”
“What about Jerry? What was his take on it?”
“He wasn’t convinced either,” Ted shared. “And, to be honest, it really bothered him to think that somebody could be getting away with murder. Obviously we’ve solved some of the cases but were the rest accidents, suicides, or something else?”
“I think that would bother anybody,” Barret stated, “particularly anybody related to these cases. So, … now what?”
“When you say that this other guy Xavier wasn’t feeling well, do we have any confirmation that he stayed in his room?” Magnus asked Ted.
“No, we don’t,” Ted murmured. “He says he did, but, unless somebody saw him, we’ll have no way to prove differently. That’s a question we’ll need to ask the kitchen staff.”
“Avalon already told us that she couldn’t remember seeing him at all herself after breakfast. Same for Chef,” Magnus replied.
“People come and go all day long though,” Barret pointed out, “and it’s not necessarily something that the kitchen staff have time or even the awareness to clock who’s in and who’s out. To have somebody keep track of that, we’ll need more manpower.”
“Hell,” Ted grumbled. “I’ll have to make a phone call or two.” And, with that, looking fairly unimpressed, he took off at a fast clip.
Disturbed, Barret headed toward his room, only his feet had taken him directly to Avalon’s quarters. He stood outside her door and waited. When it opened suddenly, and she stepped out wearing a suspicious expression, he winced. “Hey, it is just me. I was … I was thinking I was heading back to my place,” he confessed, “but instead I found myself standing outside your door, wondering whether I should even be contacting you or not.”
“Come in,” she murmured. “I heard the footsteps stop, and, with so much trouble going on, I didn’t want to take a chance. So I opened up the door, so I would know who it was at least. However, I find you standing here, looking completely lost.”
“Yeah, and that’s a good word for it,” he muttered, as he stepped inside. “No sign of Jerry.”
She stared at him in horror. “Oh God no,” she whispered, “please not again.”
He nodded. “Yeah, that appears to be a refrain we’re dealing with on a regular basis.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “The trouble is, if somebody did something to Jerry, this time they did it right under our noses.”
“So, you want to compare all the accidents, the outright deaths, the missing people, from the beginning of this training session?” At his nod, she continued. “I wasn’t here until recently. However, from what I’ve heard, those first two looked to be accidents, yet outside of the complex.”
“Sure, but still fairly close to base, right?”
“Yes. So, it could have been anybody who was part of the training mission or the exercise they were on, or it could have been anybody still here on base just because it was close enough for them to travel back and forth. And lots of people did travel back and forth, depending on what was going on some days. They were working in relays originally, I heard.”
He nodded slowly. “Which meant that the two original accidents could have really been accidents. Then we have the subsequent deaths. They could have been planned and executed … and again by almost anybody up here,” he suggested, with a huge sigh, dropping his head into his hands. “Jeez, I need a whiteboard to keep all this straight. There’s got to be a way to narrow this down. Everyone missing or dead could be explained away. Yet we can’t just leave the whiteboard standing somewhere for all to see.”
She hesitated and then pointed to the plywood floor. “How about the floor? We could always throw a carpet down.”
“You have a carpet?” he asked.
“No, but a couple mats are in the kitchen,” she offered.
“I like it. One way or another, we should find something to cover it up. You’re alone in your room most of the time anyway, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I am,” she said, “but the wrong people seeing this is not a good idea. And I’ve already had the earlier break-in here.”
He apologetically replied, “You’re right. Jesus, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. I need to do this back in my room, just in case anybody potentially sees it, especially if it’s the wrong person.”
“In that case, let’s go do it now,” she stated. When he hesitated, she shrugged. “Hey, if I’m in on it, … then I’m fully in on it, right?”
He smiled. “As long as you’re okay. I don’t want you being uncomfortable with this because it’ll be people you’ve been working with.”
“It’s people I’ve been training with,” she corrected. “We already know that Chef’s clear. We already know you’re clear, and I guess I’m clear,” she added, looking at him a bit nervously. When he nodded, relief washed over her face, and she kept going. “Magnus, Sydney, Berry, Mountain, the rest of your team. I mean, we’ve got quite a few who we know are clear, so where are the other twenty-odd people in this?”
Barret frowned at that question and nodded slowly. “That’s the point,” he declared in a flat tone.
“Let’s go get something down and start eliminating some of these people. However, if they were anywhere around these training missions in question,” she noted, “we have to look a whole lot closer.”
He nodded. “I know you don’t like the idea of spying on everybody or looking into their activities.”
She laughed. “I would say we’re well past that now. Definitely more spying is going on among everybody else than ever before. However, if somebody has been causing these accidents, we need to figure it out. Not to mention that we’re still missing Teegan Rode, Mountain’s brother.”
“I know,” Barret muttered, his tone grim. “And that’s a whole different issue.”
As they walked to his room, he checked to make sure that nobody noticed what they were doing. They passed a couple people, who seemed to be in deep discussions of their own. When Avalon and Barret got to his room, he stepped inside and motioned for her to follow.
Once in his room, she looked around and noted, “this is a little bigger than mine. What did you get? Some secret upgrade?”
He laughed. “Not really. The complete fluke of it is that everything I do here is more or less supposed to be under the guise of being here for training.”
“But that’s not why you came here, is it? You were sent here to work on this investigation, right?” she asked, eyeing him shrewdly.
He nodded. “Yep, and I feel like crap that we haven’t really gotten anywhere.”
“And yet you and I both know that is not your fault. Besides, with everything else going on—”
“Everything else going on is beginning to make me wonder if some of it hasn’t been intended to distract people and to throw us off the trail.”
“Let’s go through the list of people,” she said, “and figure out who is still around. Then maybe we can see if we can find any links between each of these people and the individual victims.” He raised his eyebrows at her. She shrugged. “Hey, just because I’m not officially part of your secret group doesn’t mean I can’t do some sleuthing on my own,” she stated, with a half smile.
“No, you absolutely can. I just want you to be careful about it,” he murmured. “I don’t want anybody to know what you’re doing or that you’re even looking at this.” When she frowned at him, he shrugged. “I really wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
She beamed a smile at him. “Oh, well, that I’ll accept. Now let’s get going.”
They quickly mapped out a timeline of the list of people missing or dead on a notepad, tweaking it to get it right on the one page before they transferred it to multiple pages on the floor, with room for notes. Then they quickly marked off everybody’s whereabouts regarding each instance. Finally they sat back to look at their work.
They had been at it for hours. When Barret looked up, Avalon was rubbing her eyes. “It’s bedtime for you,” he murmured.
She blinked several times and then nodded. “I hadn’t expected to be at it this long.”
“No, but it’s never a quick job, as it shouldn’t be, I guess. I mean, we’ve got people’s lives and careers at stake here.”
“No, you’re right,” she whispered. “I wasn’t thinking it would be so complicated. I thought once you got a lead on it, we’d be all set.”
