Before She Disappeared

by Lisa Gardner

  The bitterness in her words is sharp enough for me to release her hand and sit back. This isn’t going to be an easy conversation or a friendly one. Might as well get it done.

  “Did Livia know Angelique Badeau?”

  “No.” It’s a hard sound. Like she’s exhaling very quickly, getting the word as far away from her as possible.

  “Did Livia ever mention Angelique from the summer camp at the rec center?”

  “No.”

  “Why fashion camp?”

  Roseline pauses, blinks. Her cigarette is almost burned down. She bangs out a fresh one from the pack beside her, using the old to light the new, without even the slightest pause in between.

  “Why not?” she asks at last.

  “She didn’t talk to you about it? Say how much she wanted to go, loved going, was so happy she went? I mean, you paid for it, right? Surely you wanted a reason.”

  Roseline pauses. Inhale. Exhale. Tap. She didn’t pay for it. I can see that from her expression. Livia must’ve qualified through some program for low-income families. Meaning her mother never thought to ask a question about her enrollment?

  In the end, Roseline offers a single, fatalistic shrug. In other words, Livia did go to fashion camp, and her own mother never bothered to find out why. I notice Roseline’s cigarette is now shaking slightly in her hand. She’s not as impervious as she wants to appear.

  “Did Livia have a friend who was taking it?” I press. “Or maybe an obsession with Project Runway? Aspirations to design for a living?”

  Inhale, exhale, tap. Finally. “Livia liked to make things.”

  “Make things . . . So fashion camp was the closest she could come to . . . making something?” Which is interesting, because I’d already assumed Angelique hadn’t been into fashion either. For her, it appeared to be about the opportunity to do art. Maybe for Livia, it had been design?

  “Who are Livia’s closest friends?” I ask.

  “She doesn’t have none.” But the assertion is halfhearted. As in, her own mother once again doesn’t know the answer.

  I wait, in case she clarifies. In the silence, she takes a drag of her cigarette, so deep that for an instant her face appears skeletal. “We’re not the friendly type,” she says at last, exhaling slowly.

  “Did Livia like school?”

  “She went.”

  “What was her favorite subject?”

  “I dunno.” Inhale, exhale, tap. “She’d bring home these little projects she’d made. Like this fake pumpkin. Tiny, carved from orange plastic. Even the eyes were cut out. It was cute enough. Worthless, though. What the hell am I supposed to do with such a thing?”

  I have no idea what kind of class at school leads to minuscule plastic jack-o’-lanterns. “Do you still have it?”

  Roseline glances at the floor. There is more movement beneath the expansive layer of trash. I can’t look anymore.

  “Maybe you could show me on Livia’s computer? It must have a record of her schoolwork.”

  Roseline bangs her cigarette against the remnants of the beer can, shakes her head. “You see a computer? Girl had to use whatever they had at school.”

  “So she liked school? Her other classmates—”

  “She went. Every morning. Got up, got out. That’s all I care.”

  But I can hear it in Roseline’s voice. That’s not all she cared. That’s not all she was worrying about.

  “Sounds lonely,” I prod now. “Going to school each day without any friends.”

  “The girl stayed out of trouble.”

  “She’s shy?”

  “She’s clever. Always where you don’t expect her. Seeing things she shouldn’t see. Hearing stuff she shouldn’t hear. Even when she was young. But then, you’d turn around, and she’d be gone again. Learned from her brother not to be in one place too long. Gonna be sneaky?” Roseline stares at me. “Better also be fast. Livia had skills.”

  Meaning Angelique’s new acquaintance from fashion camp was habitually subversive? Or maybe, by virtue of snooping where she wasn’t wanted, in some kind of serious trouble?

  “In the weeks leading up to Livia’s disappearance, did anything seem different?”

  “Was what it was.”

  The answer I expected. “Your son, Johnson? Is he more or less interested in his sister?”

  “Johnson wouldn’t hurt his sister!” The answer is reflexive, and not entirely devoid of dread.

  “Why not?”

  “Family’s family. ’Sides.” Roseline’s first moment of levity. “Drama’s not good for business.”

  I get her point. Except according to O’Shaughnessy, Johnson is pretty low level. Meaning he probably reports to higher-level gangsters who probably report to highest-level drug lords. Would they consider a fifteen-year-old girl off limits? Especially one who had a tendency to be where she shouldn’t?

  “Where did Livia go to school?”

  Roseline rattles off a name that is definitely not Angelique’s school. “Is that . . . ?”

  “A trade school. Nothing wrong with that. Kids need a life skill. Or . . .”

  They’d fall back on the family business of dope dealing.

  “Did she have a favorite teacher?”

  Inhale, exhale, tap. Shrug.

  “Favorite subject?”

  “She liked making the pumpkin.”

  A commotion now. Noise from the front of the house. Roseline sits up suddenly, stubs out her cigarette. The first time she’s stopped smoking since I entered the room.

  “Time’s up.”

  “Wait—”

  “You gotta go. Door’s behind you. You know the saying, don’t let it hit you on the ass on your way out.”

  Apparently, I’m not allowed out the way I came in but must flee through the rear door. I want to argue, but suddenly Roseline is standing, her nicotine-stained fingertip an angry punctuation as she jabs it toward me.

  “Out!” Her tone is suddenly commanding.

  I hesitate. “Come with me. I’ll take you to a meeting. We’ll go together. I’ll hold your hand, you hold mine.”

  “Go!”

  “One step. Remember that year? Even now you miss it. Come with me. I’ll help you.”

  “Now.”

  “Mrs. Samdi—”

  Her left hand snakes out, grabs my shoulder, and clenches it with a strength that is surprising. “You’re not safe.”

  I don’t have words. The spit dries up in my mouth, while her clawlike fingers skewer me in place.

  “Livia was not safe.”

  “Mrs. Samdi, are you saying you’re grateful she’s gone? Is that why you never reported her having gone missing to the police? You hope she has run away. You think she’s safer that way?”

  “This is no place for girls.”

  “I can handle Johnson—”

  “It’s not my son you should fear.”

  The noise turns into a riot of pounding feet and streaming expletives. Heading straight at us.

  I want to ask more questions. I want to understand. But Roseline is already shoving me toward the back door.

  “If you find my Livia,” Mrs. Samdi hisses, wrenching open the door.

  “Wait—”

  “Do not bring her home to this.”

  Then Roseline Samdi shoves me straight out. I stagger down the steps, arms pinwheeling for balance. I’ve just come to a stop, when I hear male voices, shouting behind me.

  “Mom!”

  “Stop her!”

  “What the fuck, J.J.!”

  I don’t spare a moment to look back. I bolt away from the house. I run fast, then faster, not even glancing behind me when I hear the rat-a-tat of footsteps chasing me. Though just for a second, out of the corner of my eye, I spot a shockingly tall, skinny Black man wearing a red
tracksuit and loads of gold chains. Retro man, I recognize. The guy from Angelique’s school who’s dressed like a time capsule from 2002.

  There’s a look on his face. A warning.

  I add a fresh burst of speed just as a gunshot splits the air. Followed by another.

  I dodge left, hunching my shoulders to make myself as small a target as possible as I pound down the sidewalk, gasping through my tears. Another left, another right. Keep on trucking. Don’t look back. Don’t ever look back.

  Paul, I think wildly. Then the giant hole in my chest gapes open, and I run through that, too. Faster, faster, faster.

  Don’t look back don’t look back don’t look back.

  I run so fast my tears dry before they can stain my cheeks. I race so hard I’m not even in this city, but somewhere far away where the trees are sinister shadows and the moon is snatching at my hair and I have to squeeze my eyes shut against the sheer terror.

  Don’t look back don’t look back don’t look back.

  Next thing I know, I’m plowing into the Dunkin’ Donuts, where my new friends are staring at me.

  “Call the police, call the police, call the police!” I scream at Charadee.

  Which she does, except I don’t remember the rest; I’m crying too hard, my mind a wreck of then and now, what was and what is. What will never be again.

  Eventually Lotham bursts through the door. He takes one look at my devastated face and pulls me into his arms.

  “Paul,” I sob hysterically against his chest.

  He lets me collapse against him, and holds me as I weep.

  CHAPTER 20

  I sit in a booth at Stoney’s. On the table in front of me: a mug of coffee, a glass of water, and a giant box of Munchkins that Charadee shoved into my hands as I was leaving. The box is open. I’ve managed to eat two, which explains the powdered sugar on my fingers, lips, and cheek. Lotham disappeared long enough to retrieve a damp washcloth. Now, he uses it to wipe gingerly at my snot- and tear-stained face. I don’t make a move to stop him or assist.

  My brain has short-circuited. My heart has exploded in my chest. That nothing actually happened to me is the least of my worries.

  “Coffee,” Lotham orders.

  I lift the mug, take a sip.

  “Sugar.”

  He provides a chocolate Munchkin. I chew obediently.

  “Water.”

  I move on to the glass.

  “Repeat.”

  So, I do. Two, three, four more times. Till my coffee mug is dry and the water gone and a suspicious number of donuts missing as well. Judging by the smear of red jam at the corner of Lotham’s mouth, I’m not the only one using pastries to self-medicate.

  “Start at the beginning.”

  I try. I’m not really sure what there is to say. I met with Mrs. Samdi. I asked her a variety of questions about her daughter, Livia, most of which she couldn’t answer. Meaning I basically learned what Detective Lotham had surmised the day before—Livia’s family wasn’t exactly the loving sort.

  “She ordered you to leave,” he repeats now.

  “Someone arrived. At the front. I could hear a commotion. I never saw who, but Mrs. Samdi’s demeanor changed. She shoved me out the back. She said . . .” I draw a shaky breath. “She said the house wasn’t safe for girls. She told me if I found her daughter, not to bring her home.”

  “Why isn’t their house safe for girls?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The son, J.J.—”

  “Johnson.”

  Lotham arches a brow.

  “You should call him that,” I insist. “Really pisses him off. Apparently, you can’t score any street cred as a Johnson.”

  “Definitely not.”

  “But she also implied he wouldn’t hurt his sister. Family doesn’t go after family. Someone else, I’m guessing one of Johnson’s acquaintances, bosses, I don’t know. Higher on the criminal food chain.”

  “Okay. So Mrs. Samdi shoves you out the rear door. You take off and they—”

  “I didn’t see.”

  “—give chase. And fire a gun?”

  “I heard gunshots. But I didn’t stop to look. Firing at me, firing at someone else, someone else firing at them firing at me. Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “And guess is as good as we got,” Lotham grumbles. “Uniforms already canvassed the area. As the saying goes, nobody saw nothin’. On that block, that’s how it goes. Crime techs recovered a fresh slug from the side of a porch probably two feet from where you passed. Trajectory indicates it didn’t come from behind you, however, but from across the street.”

  “Oh goody. So it was one of the neighbors who wanted me dead.”

  “First time being shot at, Frankie?”

  “No.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “Want a drink?”

  “Is it a day ending in Y? Hell yes.”

  “Then talking is what you get to do instead.”

  I have to smile. Man is smart, his manipulation well played. But I’m not going to talk to him about my meltdown, or PTSD or whatever you want to call it. It’s too personal. And maybe, all these years later, still too intimate. It belongs to Paul and me. To talk about it with anyone else . . .

  I will call his number. Listen to it ring. The click of him picking up. The reassuring sound of his breathing, syncing with my own. My heartbeat. His heartbeat. Intertwined.

  Then a woman’s voice: “You need to stop this. You need help.”

  Don’t we all?

  I get up from the booth, head to the kitchen for more coffee. I’m already so caffeinated I teeter on the edge of nausea. Ironically, this is not when I’m most at risk for falling off the wagon. I’m too exhausted to self-destruct. If I finally pour that drink I’ve been craving for nine fucking years . . . Trust me, I plan on remembering it.

  When I turn around, Lotham is standing behind me in the kitchen. He takes the mug from my violently trembling hand, and leads me back to the booth.

  “Talk to me,” he says.

  “I don’t think Livia and Angelique meant to be friends.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think something else brought them together. Neither one of them enrolled in fashion camp because they were that into fashion. Angelique’s a future doctor who likes to sketch. Livia, apparently, is a sneaky survivor with a penchant for making things. But then Angelique’s bestie bailed on her for a basketball player, and Livia never had a friend to start with. So you have two lone girls, both quiet but smart. Maybe they simply sat side by side for a bit . . . I don’t know. I think they became friends in spite of themselves.”

  “Yet never mentioned each other’s names to their families?”

  “Livia doesn’t have that kind of family. As for Angelique . . .” I hesitate, glance at the detective. “In the beginning, I thought Angelique kept Livia to herself so as to not alienate her other friends. But given how connected Angelique and Livia must have become, for both of them to have now gone missing . . . What if we were right in the beginning? Angelique did fall in love. It just wasn’t with a boy.”

  “You think she and Livia were dating?”

  “It would explain the secrecy. At fifteen, trying to figure out who they are, how they identify. Livia with her fucked-up family. Angelique with her much more traditional one.” I shrug. “None of this stuff is easy. But clearly there’s a connection between the two girls. And yet, as you say, Angelique never mentioned Livia’s name to anyone. In her world, that’s a pretty big omission.”

  “Unless Livia got her involved in something criminal.”

  “You really think Angelique wouldn’t talk to Marjolie and Kyra about illegal activities? Please. Best buds are by definition co-conspirators. No, this level of secrecy smacks of something more pe
rsonal.”

  Lotham nods slowly. “All right. But even if we assume Angelique and Livia’s relationship was intimate, it still doesn’t explain how both wound up missing, three months apart. Let alone why Angelique had thousands of dollars, including counterfeit hundreds, stashed in a ceramic lamp.”

  “Details, details,” I mutter. But the detective does have a point. “Let’s back up for a moment. What do we know about each girl? They both live in Mattapan, but they didn’t attend the same high school, meaning they probably met for the first time at fashion camp. Angelique was there due to her interest in art while Livia liked to make things. Both come from very different family backgrounds. Both, apparently, are good at keeping secrets.”

  Lotham nods. His hand remains next to mine on the table. Now, he idly rubs my thumb. I’m not sure he knows he’s doing it. But I don’t move and he doesn’t stop.

  “What kinds of things did Livia make?” he asks.

  “Her mom talked about a plastic jack-o’-lantern that Livia brought home from school. Eyes cut out, whole nine yards. Though I have no idea what kind of class teaches plastic pumpkins.”

  “Livia attended a trade school. I was talking to her guidance counselor when I got the report of shots fired. Livia had courses in basic construction, metalwork, and some computer design class. I don’t remember anything involving plastic. Wait.” Lotham pulls his hand away, snaps his fingers. “Her computer design course. They have a 3D printer. That would do it. Maybe for Halloween. Design and print your own jack-o’-lantern.”

  “Counterfeit money,” I murmur. “Any way you can get from design and print pumpkins to design and print U.S. currency?”

  “Absolutely not. Remember that whole spiel on counterfeiting being a very sophisticated operation, involving printing presses, master tradespeople, and extremely rare and specialized inks—”

  “Yeah, it’s coming back to me now. But still . . .”

  “We have two missing girls with at least a personal connection, not to mention complementary skill sets in art and design.” Lotham shakes his head. “Honest to God, the more I learn in this case the less anything makes sense. But having said that, I think we should return to Livia’s school. Determine exactly what kind of mad skills she had, not to mention if she ever had Angelique with her in the classroom after hours. The fake bills have to mean something, though I’ll be damned if I know what.”