Wade had done it the previous morning.
Both men appeared to be calculating what kind of woman they were dealing with before deciding how carefully to answer her.
Celeste returned to June's desk.
“What can we verify next?” she asked.
June pointed to the terminal map.
“The driver saw her move toward the old service road. We haven't accounted for the buildings beyond it.”
The service road led past a maintenance shed, a closed ticket office, and a volunteer meal program operating from a former maritime classroom.
Most people using the ferry never noticed the buildings.
The people needing somewhere quiet sometimes did.
June and Harlow spoke with staff while another team reviewed the available route information. They explained the concern without circulating protected details unnecessarily or suggesting that accepting help made Leah a suspect.
A volunteer named Vera Dunn remembered her.
Vera was sixty-eight, retired from bookkeeping, and accustomed to being asked whether every person needing a meal was homeless, dishonest, or simply bad at planning.
She answered the officers' questions carefully.
“She was frightened,” she said. “That doesn't tell me why. I asked whether she wanted help, not a history.”
Leah ate soup and used a quiet room to make a call. She declined transport after asking who would be told where she went.
Vera offered another conversation with the support organization.
Leah accepted.
The accounts were consistent enough to establish more of the sequence. She had not vanished from every human contact. She was moving through places designed to offer help while trying to control who learned about it.
That made privacy part of the investigation, not an obstacle to it.
Sharon Bell coordinated what the organization could properly share. She confirmed Leah received temporary assistance, then left after a man asked staff about her using a photograph.
Nobody had disclosed her location to him.
The fear was enough.
Celeste asked when that happened.
Two days earlier.
“Has she contacted you since?”
“Briefly. She asked whether changing an address would really keep it private.”
The question connected with the concern about police information.
It did not prove the source.
The integrity team continued checking access while June followed the person.
At the meal program, Vera supplied a detail nobody had asked about yet. Leah was concerned about a bag of documents left behind during the terminal encounter. She wanted proof of employment, identification, and information needed to establish herself elsewhere.
“She kept saying she couldn't start again without the papers.”
Vera remembered offering a notebook so Leah could write down what she needed replaced. Leah listed items, crossed out one, and asked whether the paper would be thrown away when she left.
“I told her she could keep it.”
“Did she?” June asked.
“Yes. Folded it small enough for her pocket.”
The detail helped establish the conversation, but investigators did not treat every anxious action as evidence of a particular offense. They asked what Vera observed and which explanations Leah actually gave.
Vera said she never heard Leah threaten anyone or ask the volunteers to confront the man she feared.
She asked for a quiet corner and a way to speak without being overheard.
Those modest requests had required her to tell parts of her story repeatedly to strangers.
At one point, she apologized for eating before answering a question.
Vera told her the meal was not conditional on a complete account.
June wrote the words down because they described a kind of help the station sometimes forgot how to offer: assistance that did not begin by demanding a distressed person perform credibility on command.
Before leaving, the officers gave Vera the correct contact for further relevant information and explained that she should not conduct her own search or circulate private details.
She looked relieved to have a practical task with clear limits.
June looked at Harlow.
Orton's attorney had offered to arrange the return of some property during the interview.
He had not identified exactly what the property included.
Investigators followed up through counsel and requested relevant material under the proper process. They would not make Leah negotiate privately with a person she feared simply to obtain her documents.
That evening, a worker checking the old ticket-office roof remembered seeing a woman carrying a red plastic shopping bag. She asked when the repair crew would return, then said she would not be there.
The account was uncertain, but the description matched an item supplied by the support organization.
The building required assessment.