Chapter 11 : Warehouse
1018 Words
Ethan sat down at his desk, but the case file in front of him remained unopened.
His mind was still back in the hallway.
Michael Reed.
Claire Morgan.
The van.
James.
And one sentence that wouldn't leave him alone.
“We just do the company's job.”
Ethan reached for his notebook and started writing.
Michael Reed
Claire Morgan
James
The company
Then he wrote the license plate beneath them, pressing the pen hard enough to leave a dark mark on the page.
4MZ-7281
That was something he could check.
Something real.
If he wanted to find out where Claire had been taken, he had to start with the van.
Ethan looked toward Tom.
“Tom.”
“Yeah?”
“Can you run a plate for me?”
Tom glanced up from the paperwork on his desk.
“Sure. Which one?”
“4MZ-7281.”
Tom repeated the number under his breath.
“4MZ-7281?”
“Yeah.”
“I can check it through the traffic system.”
Ethan got up and walked over.
“Can you see who it was registered to?”
“Should be able to.”
Tom logged in and entered the plate number.
The system took a few seconds to respond.
Then the vehicle record appeared.
Tom scanned the screen.
“Got it.”
Ethan leaned in.
“What is it?”
“Commercial van.”
Tom scrolled down.
“The registered owner is a transportation company.”
“What company?”
“Northbridge Transport.”
Ethan immediately wrote the name down.
“Anything else?”
“There’s a registered address.”
Tom read it out.
Ethan added it to his notes.
“Can you print that?”
“Yeah.”
Tom printed the record and handed it over.
Ethan looked it over once.
The address was all he needed.
“Thanks, Tom.”
“Where are you headed?”
“I’m going to check the place.”
Tom gave him a look.
“Right now?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Let me know what you find.”
Ethan slipped the paperwork into a folder.
“I will.”
Then he left.
The drive took a little over forty minutes.
The address led him into an older industrial part of the city, where warehouses and small businesses lined the streets.
Ethan slowed down as he approached the location.
He checked the building numbers.
Then the address on the paper.
They matched.
But there was a problem.
There was no Northbridge Transport.
No office.
No sign.
No trucks.
Nothing.
Just an abandoned warehouse.
The building looked like it had been empty for years. The paint was faded, weeds had pushed through cracks in the pavement, and rust covered the metal doors.
Ethan got out and walked around the property.
He found nothing.
No company name.
No indication that anyone was still using the place.
He pulled out his phone and called Tom.
“Hey, Tom. I’m at the address.”
“That was fast.”
“There’s no company here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like. It’s an abandoned warehouse.”
Tom was quiet for a moment.
“You sure you’ve got the right address?”
“Yeah. I checked it twice.”
“Hang on. Let me pull the company up again.”
“Okay.”
Ethan waited.
A few minutes passed before Tom came back on the line.
“I found it.”
“What?”
“The company was registered at that address.”
Ethan looked at the warehouse.
“And?”
“It was dissolved.”
“When?”
“2013.”
Ethan frowned.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. The registration was cancelled in 2013.”
Ethan stared at the building.
So the company had existed.
But it was gone.
“Can we find anything else on the company?” he asked. “Old records, anything like that?”
“Probably.”
Tom hesitated.
“But it'll take some time.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll see what I can dig up.”
“Thanks.”
Ethan ended the call.
He looked at the warehouse one last time, then got back into his car.
The trail had gone cold.
At least for now.
By the time Ethan returned to the station, evening was setting in.
He put the vehicle record on his desk and sat there for a moment.
Then he reached into his bag and pulled out Whitmore’s notebook.
If Whitmore had been looking into Claire's disappearance, there might be something in those pages he'd missed.
Ethan opened the notebook and started going through it again.
This time, he wasn't looking for Claire's name.
He was looking for anything connected to transportation.
He turned one page after another.
Names.
Dates.
Case notes.
Numbers he didn't recognize.
Then he stopped.
A name caught his eye.
Northbridge Transport.
Ethan stared at it.
The same company.
The one he'd just found through the traffic system.
He read the line beneath it.
There were only a few words.
Transport “cargo.”
Ethan's eyes settled on the word cargo.
Whitmore had marked it.
Not the company name.
That word.
Cargo.
And suddenly, Ethan was back inside Michael's memory.
The van.
Claire, unconscious in the back.
James standing behind Michael.
“What's with the cargo this time?”
Then Michael's answer.
“This one's alive.”
Ethan slowly looked back down at the notebook.
Cargo.
Whitmore had investigated Northbridge Transport.
Michael and James had apparently been doing work for a company that transported something they called cargo.
But what had Whitmore found?
And what exactly had he meant by cargo?
Ethan didn't have an answer.
Not yet.
He only knew that two separate pieces of the investigation had just crossed paths.
Whitmore had been looking into Northbridge Transport.
And years later, Ethan had heard the same language from Michael and James while Claire was being loaded into a van.
That couldn't be ignored.
Ethan stared at the word one more time.
Cargo.
Whatever it meant, he was going to find out.
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