“If she chose to leave, that's fine,” she said. “I just need to know the choice was hers.”
Celeste knew that was the question the closure label had never answered.
By early afternoon, the terminal inquiry established that Leah had reached the area.
It did not establish that she boarded a ferry.
An employee remembered a woman matching her description asking where to charge a phone. The memory was uncertain until the employee reviewed an ordinary maintenance entry about a failed outlet near the waiting room.
The date matched.
Investigators obtained the relevant recordings through the proper process and compared the available views without treating a distant face as a guaranteed identification.
Tess later helped confirm clothing and a distinctive repair on Leah's work bag. Other records supported the timing.
Leah appeared near the ticket machines.
A man approached her.
They spoke beside a column that concealed parts of the interaction. When Leah tried to leave, he moved with her. The footage did not capture everything said or done, but it showed enough to raise concerns beyond voluntary silence.
June brought the findings to Celeste.
“Orton?”
“The identification needs confirmation. It looks consistent.”
“Then confirm it independently.”
Celeste asked about the next visible movement.
Leah walked toward the service road. The man followed. A delivery vehicle blocked one camera's view, leaving a gap nobody could honestly fill from the recording alone.
The driver of that vehicle became a priority witness.
His dispatch office identified him and arranged contact. His name was Martin Shaw, fifty-four, and he remembered the stop because a woman asked whether he could call someone without letting a man nearby see.
He initially thought she was avoiding an awkward conversation.
Then he saw her face.
“She wasn't arguing,” he told June. “She was trying not to be heard.”
He let her use his phone from inside the cab while he unloaded a parcel. He did not remember the number, but the relevant record could be examined with appropriate consent and documentation.
The call went to a community support organization.
The organization would not disclose a client's location because an officer asked over the phone. Its staff requested formal verification and a clear explanation of the concern.
Wade heard that part of the discussion in the operations room.
“Now everybody needs a personal invitation.”
June looked at him.
“They're protecting the person we're trying to protect.”
Celeste supported the verification request and arranged the contact properly. She would not build her first day around demanding that another institution abandon safeguards simply because her own had failed to use them.
The organization confirmed that a woman using Leah's name sought help. Further communication would require care, consent where possible, and an assessment of immediate safety.
That was progress.
Celeste asked June to record both the confirmed information and its limits before the next briefing. A message that sounded reassuring could become another closure if its source and meaning were not clear.
The organization had received contact.
It had not established a current location for police to announce.
June wrote the difference explicitly.
At the same time, the terminal employee asked whether she should tell other staff to watch for Leah. Investigators arranged an appropriate, limited request rather than allow private details to spread through an entire workplace.
One staff member remembered seeing Orton near the service-road entrance on a later day. The account needed checking and would not be turned into a confirmed sighting merely because it fit the developing concern.
The captain listened to that qualification without demanding a faster answer.
It was the sort of patience Grace had wanted from supervisors when callers supplied incomplete information.
Now patience was being used to make the search more accurate instead of postpone it.
Before leaving the desk, Celeste asked whether the team had the staff needed to complete the agreed tasks. June identified a gap, and another supervisor arranged cover.
The answer to a difficult file could not remain simply that someone should care enough to work indefinitely.
It was not permission to announce she had been found.
At four, Tess called the station again. This time, Grace answered with the case contact available and a record of what could be shared.
Tess heard that the inquiry was active and that the terminal information had produced leads.
“Does that mean she's alive?”
Grace did not say more than the evidence supported.
“It means we're following a confirmed part of her movements.”
Tess thanked her, then apologized for calling.