Fever Dream

She passed into the interrogation room--one of the nicer ones, designed for questioning cooperative witnesses, not grilling uncooperative suspects. It had a coffee table, a desk, and a couple of chairs. The AV man was already there and he nodded, giving her a thumbs-up.

'Thanks,' said Hayward. 'Much appreciated, especially on such short notice.' Her New Year's resolution had been to control her irritable temper with those below her on the totem pole. Those above still got the unvarnished treatment: Kick up, kiss down, that was her new motto.

She leaned her head out the door. 'Send the first one in, please.'

The sergeant brought in the first witness, who was still in uniform. She indicated a seat.

'I know you've already been questioned, but I hope you won't mind another round. I'll try to keep it short. Coffee, tea?'

'No thank you, Captain,' the ship's officer said.

'You're the vessel's security director, is that correct?'

'Correct.'

The security director was a harmless elderly gentleman with a shock of white hair and a pleasing British accent who looked like a retired police inspector from some small town in England. And that's probably, she thought, exactly what he is.

'So, what happened?' she asked. She always liked starting with general questions.

'Well, Captain, this first came to my attention shortly after sail-away. I had a report that one of the passengers, Constance Greene, was acting strangely.'

'How so?'

'She'd brought on board her child, a baby of three months. This in itself was unusual--I can't recall a single case of a passenger ever bringing a baby quite that young aboard ship. Especially a single mother. I received a report that just after she boarded, a friendly passenger wanted to see her baby--and maybe got too close--and that Ms. Greene apparently threatened the passenger.'

'What did you do?'

'I interviewed Ms. Greene in her cabin and concluded that she was nothing more than an overprotective mother--you know how some can be--and no real threat was intended. The passenger who complained was, I thought, a bit of a prying old busybody.'

'How did she seem? Ms. Greene, I mean.'

'Calm, collected, rather formal.'

'And the baby?'

'There in the room with her, in a crib supplied by housekeeping. Asleep during my brief visit.'

'And then?'

'Ms. Greene shut herself up in her cabin for three or four days. After that, she was seen about the ship for the rest of the voyage. There were no other incidents that I'm aware of--that is, until she couldn't produce her baby at passport control. The baby, you see, had been added to her passport, as is customary when a citizen gives birth abroad.'

'Did she seem sane to you?'

'Quite sane, at least on my one interaction with her. And unusually poised for a young lady of her age.'

The next witness was a purser who confirmed what the security director had said: that the passenger boarded with her baby, that she was fiercely protective of him, and that she had disappeared into her cabin for several days. Then, toward the middle of the crossing, she was seen taking meals in the restaurants and touring the ship without the baby. People assumed she had a nanny or was using the ship's babysitting service. She kept to herself, spoke to nobody, rebuffed all friendly gestures. 'I thought,' said the purser, 'that she was one of these extremely rich eccentrics, you know, the kind who have so much money they can act as they please and there's no one to say otherwise. And...' He hesitated.

'Go on.'

'Toward the end of the voyage, I began to think she was maybe just a little bit... mad.'

Hayward paused at the door to the small holding cell. She had never met Constance Greene but had heard plenty from Vinnie. He had always spoken of her as if she were older, but when the door swung open Hayward was astonished to see a young woman of no more than twenty-two or twenty-three years of age, her dark hair cut in a stylish if old-fashioned bob, sitting primly on the fold-down bunk, still formally dressed from the ship.

'May I come in?'

Constance Greene looked at her. Hayward prided herself on being able to read a person's eyes, but these were unfathomable.

'Please do.'

Hayward took a seat on the lone chair in the room. Could this woman really have thrown her own child into the Atlantic? 'I'm Captain Hayward.'

'Delighted to make your acquaintance, Captain.'

Under the circumstances, the antique graciousness of the greeting gave Hayward the creeps. 'I'm a friend of Lieutenant D'Agosta, whom you know, and I have also worked on occasion with your, ah, uncle, Special Agent Pendergast.'

'Not uncle. Aloysius is my legal guardian. We're not related.' She corrected Hayward primly, punctiliously.

'I see. Do you have any family?'