“Is somebody finally looking?”
Celeste looked at the word closed on the screen.
“Yes,” she said. “We're looking.”
Tess arrived at the precinct carrying a green folder and a phone with a cracked case.
She was thirty-five, a payroll clerk who wore work shoes she had not had time to change. Her employer had let her leave after she explained that someone at the station finally wanted to see the messages.
Wade was near the counter when she entered.
She recognized him immediately.
Her shoulders tightened.
June met her before the silence became another obstacle and took her to a private interview room.
Celeste joined them after arranging the first active follow-up tasks. She did not promise Tess a result. She explained what they needed to establish and asked whether she wanted water before beginning.
“I don't want to waste time,” Tess said.
“A glass of water won't do that.”
The sentence made Tess look down.
For a week, she had felt that every ordinary need risked making her appear less credible.
She opened the folder.
Inside were screenshots, a bus receipt, notes from calls to the station, and a photograph of Leah standing beside the sisters' grandmother at a birthday dinner.
The grandmother was eighty-one and lived elsewhere. Tess had not told her everything because the uncertainty was already frightening enough without repeating it around the family.
“Leah doesn't always tell me where she goes,” Tess said. “I know she doesn't have to. That's not what this is.”
Celeste nodded.
“Explain what made this different.”
Tess took out the photograph, then seemed embarrassed by it.
“You probably need a recent picture. This is only a few months old.”
Leah was laughing at something outside the frame, one hand resting on the back of their grandmother's chair. There was a small smear of cake icing on her sleeve.
“She spent the whole dinner pretending she didn't do that,” Tess said.
For a moment, her voice belonged to an ordinary sister rather than a reporting person explaining why concern deserved a response.
Then she put the picture beside the messages.
“She was making plans. Not big ones. She wanted to change her work schedule and go back to a class she stopped attending.”
Celeste asked what records might help establish the immediate sequence. The photograph could identify Leah, but it would not prove every detail Tess feared.
Tess understood.
She did not need the police to accept fear as certainty. She needed them to stop treating uncertainty as a reason to close the folder.
Leah arranged a specific meeting. She had been seeking help leaving Orton's influence behind. She told Tess she was frightened that he knew things she had not told him.
Where she went for appointments.
Which friend let her stay overnight.
The time she left a workplace using a different entrance.
Orton called those coincidences proof that he cared enough to notice.
Leah called them a reason she no longer felt safe being noticed.
She worked in housekeeping at the Linden Quay Hotel and had arranged leave. She planned to bring employment records and identification to Tess before staying somewhere Orton did not know.
The last confirmed message said she was near the ferry terminal.
Then nothing.
June asked about access to accounts, devices, vehicles, and other people who might know the plan. The questions were intended to test possibilities, not imply Leah caused her own disappearance by failing to hide perfectly.
Tess answered carefully.
“When I came before, he said maybe she wanted space.”
“Who said that?” Celeste asked.
Tess looked toward the door.
“The officer at the desk.”
Wade.
“I told him she asked me to help. He said people say things when they're upset.”
Celeste wrote the statement down without supplying the answer she expected Tess to give next.
“What did you say?”
“I asked him to check whether she reached the terminal.”
“And?”
“He said the police couldn't track down every grown woman after an argument.”
The distinction was real in the abstract. Adults had privacy and autonomy. It did not excuse failing to assess the actual information in front of the officer.
Tess had brought specific concerns.
They had been reduced to an argument.
When the interview paused, June went to coordinate the terminal inquiry. Celeste stayed with Tess long enough to explain the next contact and what would happen if more information arrived.
Tess closed the folder but kept her hand on it.