Before She Disappeared

CHAPTER 22

Lotham is the dedicated, workaholic detective I suspected him to be. He doesn’t take me to some evidence lab or special countersurveillance expert. He drives us to the BPD field office in Mattapan. District B-3, the blue sign reads, perched outside a fairly new-looking brick structure. It has a towering front façade that reminds me of Angelique’s high school. Apparently New England architecture is all about first appearances.

Inside the station, things are a bit more “TV cop show.” The drop ceiling, cheap flooring, security desk. Lotham waves at the front desk sergeant, having me sign in, while not offering an explanation. The female officer—older, with a hawkish face—looks bored. But I’m wide-eyed. My last few investigative gigs have involved places where the local police outpost was barely more than a double-wide. In comparison, this is swanky. Boston fucking PD for sure.

Lotham weaves his way down the hall, up the stairs. Once more, my job is to scamper behind him. I catch a glimpse of walls covered with Most Wanted photos juxtaposed with tributes to officers fallen in the line of duty. I don’t get to study any of it, as I quicken my pace to keep up with a boxer on a mission.

When we finally arrive at Lotham’s workspace, it turns out to be a desk in an open bullpen. The low walls of the cubicle bear everything from a few tucked-away photos of beaming schoolkids—his nieces and nephews, I would guess—to various police agency patches to several framed Muhammad Ali quotes. Angelique’s missing poster is pinned up in one corner, right where he’d see it every time he sat down in front of his computer. He doesn’t comment, and neither do I.

But I have a curious flushed sensation. I was right. He is who I thought he would be. Which is much more than I can say for most people.

Lotham fires his desktop to life. He disappears briefly, returns with two plastic cups of water. Then he snags a desk chair from the unoccupied cubicle behind him and drags it over. He doesn’t speak, just gestures. I take a seat. Pick up my water. Watch his fingertips fly across his keyboard.

I have only limited technical skills. But befitting a big-city detective, Lotham appears just as at home in front of a computer as he does out on the streets.

Next thing I know, he’s shoving back his chair, while gesturing me closer. “First—and best—camera angle,” he states. “Taken from the corner grocer across the street. You’ll see all the kids exit at end of day, Friday, November 5. Day of Angelique’s disappearance.”

I nod and focus on the screen as he hits play. I don’t get to hear the school bell, as the video offers images only. But I can pretty much fill in the audio, as on the screen bodies start pouring out the doors and down the steps.

It’s a fluid mass of teenage humanity. Almost all of it African American and clad in the same uniform of jeans, hoodies, flannel shirts. In the end, it’s not Angelique I spy first, but her curvy friend, Marjolie. Which leads to Kyra, and then, following shortly behind her, Angelique. The girl is wearing denim leggings with an oversized sweater in deep red. She has a bright-colored knit scarf wrapped tight around her neck, thin black gloves on her hands, and untied duck boots on her feet. Her navy blue backpack is slung over one shoulder. The weather is sunny but clearly cold.

Lotham taps the screen, in case I missed our target. I nod to let him know I see her. As we watch, she and her besties grow slightly larger, walking across the street toward the corner grocer. Then they disappear from view.

“After-school snack,” I mutter. Or drink, as it might have been in my case.

Lotham hits arrows. The video fast-forwards. Now we see all three girls reappear. There appears to be laughing, hugging. One dark head peels away. Taller, so I’m guessing Kyra. That leaves Marjolie and Angelique. Marjolie must return inside the store, as she simply disappears from the frame. But Angelique appears more fully, crossing the street toward her school. She doesn’t head for the front steps, however, but disappears, backpack slung over her shoulder as she strides down the long right side of the brick building, toward the infamous bolt-hole and side door, where she vanishes completely.

It’s a disconcerting feeling. A girl. There—with her friends and favorite scarf and school bag—then gone. Until she reappears at a cybercafé eleven months later.

I want to reach out and touch her image on the screen. I wonder if her family still does the same. Strokes the framed photo of her smiling cheek before heading to bed each night. Places two fingers against her matte lips upon waking again each morning. How can a person go from being so present, so alive, to vanished without a trace?

I focus my attention back on the screen. I try to think past the image, to the Angelique I now know. A smart, serious student. A caretaker for her brother, her aunt, and her mom back home. In her brother’s words, not a dreamer but a planner.

What I notice now is how she walks. Straight, direct, not a trace of uncertainty. Angelique didn’t wander down the side of the building to whatever would happen next. She strode purposefully forward. A girl on a mission.

“What the hell are you doing, Angelique?” I mutter.

Lotham nods slightly. He’s asked the same question a million times.

He hits stop. “I can already tell you how this video ends: without any more sign of Angelique. Which brings us to half a dozen more cameras, including traffic cams at each major intersection, none of which show her either.”

“From what I can tell, neither of Angelique’s friends reentered the school after her. It appears that Kyra heads off to the left, while Marjolie spends more time in the little grocer.”

“Actually, in a matter of minutes, Marjolie heads down the block in the opposite direction of the school, to the bus stop Angelique normally uses. I traced her route back home utilizing various video feeds. Kyra, as well. Both go from here to various buses to their individual residences.”

I nod, impressed. That must’ve taken no shortage of time to sort out, given all the cameras involved. But it’s also good info to have. Whatever happened next didn’t involve Angelique’s best friends.

Which leaves us with? “All right. So we know where Angelique goes—down the side of the school. We know where Kyra and Marjolie head—home. Which brings us to new friend . . . associate . . . something, Livia Samdi. What about her?”

Lotham obediently rewinds the deli-mart footage. Once again students pour down the front steps into the broad city street. This time, I keep my eyes out for a red hat. I don’t know Livia’s features much more than that.

Lotham rewinds six more times. We devise a system. I stare at the upper left quadrant while he does lower right. We work our way toward each other. The end result: No red baseball cap. No Livia Samdi.

I sip more water, rub my eyes. Lotham closes out that video, loads up the next.

“This is from the traffic cam on the intersection to the west of the school.”

I nod, grateful I don’t have work tonight, as apparently, there’s enough footage here to last at least a week.

“How did you go through this the first time?” I mutter.

“Painfully. Our video tech also ran facial recognition software against it, though given the number of kids and how few gaze directly at the camera, that was a low-probability play.”

“Leave no stone unturned,” I murmur.

He agrees.

The traffic surveillance starts a minute before the end-of-day exodus. I watch a couple of cars pass through the intersection. Then there’s a sense of movement at the edge of the camera: the students, descending. Then, individual shapes become clear as dozens of students trudge toward the intersection, headed for bus stops, whatever. None are Angelique or her friends, which makes sense as we already know they’re at the grocery across the street.

I study the faces anyway, looking not just for Livia Samdi but anyone who might suddenly strike a spark of inspiration or magically answer our millions of questions. Nothing.

We watch this video for a solid fifteen minutes. Until the last of the kids have disappeared and only cars zoom into the camera’s field of view.

I yawn, cracking my jaw, as if that will get my eyes to focus again. Honestly, this is tedious work.

“Next camera?” Lotham asks.

“Next camera.”

Repeat and repeat. I earn new respect for Boston detectives. This is draining work and I still can’t be sure I’m not missing something. With so much to see on a busy city street, it’s hard to know where to look, let alone to sustain focus.

Lotham switches up videos; he must’ve downloaded all these feeds to his computer months ago. Where he could watch them again and again, deep into the night, searching, searching, searching.

We break the screen into quadrants again, as that seems the most scientific approach. We study, stare, grunt, groan. No luck.

An hour later, we both shove back our chairs and rub our eyes.

“This is pissing me off,” I say.

“Welcome to my world.”

“I was so sure Livia was the missing link. Knowing about her involvement now, you’d load up these videos, we’d spy her hat, her face, something and kapow! All the pieces of the puzzle would fall into place.”

“Kapow?”

“I like a little drama in my narrative.” I rub the bridge of my nose. My stomach growls. I’m starving. Lotham must be as well, but I can tell from his face he’s not ready to take a break any more than I am. We want something to show for all this effort. It’s human nature.

“Let’s talk it through,” he says. “What do we know from the footage?”

“Angelique definitely heads down the side of the school to the emergency exit and hidden bolt-hole. Marjolie and Kyra don’t.”

Lotham nods, laces his fingers behind his head, and stretches out his shoulders. “Our assumption has been that Angelique reenters the school via the side exit. So, if Marjolie and Kyra are headed home, as we know they did, who opens the door?”

I sigh heavily. “I asked about it being left propped open. Apparently, the school is wise to that trick and monitors the door. So the kids use an inside man. Only person I can think of is Livia Samdi. Angelique’s brother goes to the middle school, right?”

“Yep.”

“So it can’t be him.”

Lotham swivels his chair to face me. “Livia isn’t a student. So how would she get into the school?”

“After hours,” I begin.

“Can’t. Front doors are locked and monitored. Students have to show their ID if they want to reenter. Welcome to today’s school security.”

I frown, chew on my bottom lip. “What about during school hours?” It hits me, what I’d witnessed myself without really noticing. “After lunch.” I speak up excitedly. “The mass exodus from the deli-mart back into the school. With all the kids headed inside at once, and rushing to make it before the final bell . . . Even the best security guards are probably looking more at backpacks and security screening than at individual faces. And Livia is a high schooler. It would be easy for her to blend in.”

Lotham lowers his arms, pulls his chair back up to the driver’s position in front of his monitor.

“I have twenty-four hours of surveillance on this tape. Let’s check it out.”

It takes a bit to find lunchtime, where again, the exodus of kids from school to sidewalk to across the street is eerily familiar. Thirty minutes pass. Then, just like that, kids appear again, clogging the street as they trudge back to school. I keep my eye out for Angelique and her friends. Sure enough. “There.”

Lotham nods, having spotted her. Being only a few hours earlier in the day, she’s wearing the same sweater and scarf, walking between Marjolie and Kyra. They all appear to be chattering away, paying no particular attention to anything.

But then, just as they hit the sidewalk in front of the school . . . Angelique pauses. Angelique looks back.

And there, on the lower edge of the video. A red hat comes into view.

We watch in total silence as Livia Samdi crosses the street, clad in ripped jeans and a gray hoodie. Angelique and her friends are already climbing up the stairs to the front door. Angelique doesn’t glance behind again, but I know she knows Livia is there. It’s in the rigid line of her posture. The way she keeps commanding her friends’ attention, keeping them focused ahead as well.

Angelique, Kyra, and Marjolie disappear inside the glass school doors. Then a few minutes later, Livia follows behind them, a blue pack slung over her shoulder that looks suspiciously close to Angelique’s.

Lotham rocks back in his chair. “I’ll be damned.”

“I think I know what happened,” I whisper.

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Without another word, Lotham loads a fresh video, the traffic cam from the closest intersection. He finds the end-of-school-day flood. Then advances five, ten, fifteen minutes. Pauses. Glances at me. Hits play.

It takes several more minutes. Then amid the now random pedestrian traffic, a new form appears from the side of the school. Walking straight toward the intersection, head down, red cap plainly visible. Ripped jeans. Gray hoodie. Blue backpack.

But looking closer, I can see the hat now sits awkwardly. Because the mass of hair underneath is considerably bigger. Angelique’s curls, stuffed beneath the brim. Not to mention the distinct gait. Direct, purposeful, determined. Angelique’s.

“Angelique changed clothes with Livia Samdi,” Lotham murmurs. His fingers dance across the keyboard. Other videos appear, disappear, but none improve our view.

“That would explain why Angelique wasn’t missing any clothes. She put on Livia’s clothes. But why?”

Lotham doesn’t answer. Instead, he returns to the corner grocer camera, except now twenty minutes after the end of the school day. Five minutes after Angelique—dressed as Livia—appears and disappears from the frame, a new female emerges from the side of the school. She moves totally differently than Angelique. Hesitant, self-conscious, almost skulking as she hugs the inside edge of the sidewalk.

Livia Samdi, now dressed in black stretch pants and a navy flannel shirt. Her shorter hair is held back with clips and for the first time I can see her face. She appears younger than her fifteen years.

A pause at the intersection, waiting for her turn to cross. She glances up. A single heartbeat, where she stares directly at the video camera.

She looks terrified.

Then she crosses the street and disappears from view.

Lotham hits stop. He once again pushes back his chair. “Fuck me,” he states.

For a change, I don’t go with the obvious retort. “Angelique took Livia’s place. The clothes, the hat. She’s not trying to hide herself. She’s trying to appear as Livia Samdi.”

Lotham sighs, scrubs his face with his hand. “I’ve been working the wrong damn missing persons case.”

I get it then, the full implication of Angelique’s deception, her and Livia’s plan. Serious, hardworking, caretaker Angelique. She didn’t engage in high-risk behavior or lifestyle choices, which had made her disappearance such a puzzle.

Because she hadn’t been the one in danger.

She hadn’t been the target.

Livia Samdi had been.

And now, she was gone, too. The girl with a gift for visualizing X-Y-Z planes. The girl who lived with a known drug dealer. The girl who clearly feared for her life.

“What the hell were they up to?” I ask quietly.

But neither one of us has the answer.