Before She Disappeared

CHAPTER 24

This is Emmanuel,” he says.

I’m groggy, still rousing from my troubled night. “Emmanuel?”

“I’m here with my aunt. We need to speak to you.”

Talk. Now. The victim’s family. “I can meet you at your apartment.”

“We’re outside, at the side entrance.”

Of course they are. “Five minutes,” I mutter, which is a total lie. I’m buried in bed, still wearing my nightshirt, breath foul, feral roommate long gone.

I hang up the phone and stagger my way to the shower. I subject myself to an ice-cold spray, then throw on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and head downstairs before I think better of it. Angelique’s family. They might have new information for me. Or new information to demand of me. Either way, their pain matters.

I crack open the side door of Stoney’s establishment long enough to identify Emmanuel and his aunt. Guerline is wearing traditional turquoise hospital scrubs, but there’s something about the expression on her face . . .

I blink against the harshness of daylight, glance at my watch. Ten a.m. Late by many standards. Way too early for the night shift crowd. I open the heavy metal door wider. “Are you hungry?” I ask.

“We’ve eaten,” Guerline speaks up.

“Coffee?”

No one says no to coffee. Plus, Lotham had said it was an important part of Haitian hospitality, and I want to be as welcoming as possible. Guerline nods. I allow her and her nephew entrance. Emmanuel, a pro by now, leads the way to the exact same booth he occupied before, while I disappear long enough to activate machines that produce caffeine. My stomach is grumbling. I inspect Viv’s fridge, hope she will forgive me as I select two eggs, fire up her griddle, and scramble away.

I return with the pot of coffee, pouring out three mugs with the deft practice of a lifelong waitress. Emmanuel goes to work with the cream and sugar. I return to the kitchen, where I wolf down the scrambled eggs to settle my stomach, then give myself a brief and silent pep talk. I head back to the dining room.

“The police,” Guerline says at last, clutching her coffee mug. “They ask, but they do not tell. You must have word.”

I understand. The families so often live in anguished limbo—not trusted, not informed, not represented in their own loved ones’ missing persons investigations. I’ve worked plenty of cases where the suspicions regarding the family’s involvement have been borne out, but my gut tells me Emmanuel and his aunt aren’t part of that group.

Briefly, I tell them about the findings involving Angelique’s recovered stash of money—that some of the bills appear to be high-quality counterfeits. Guerline’s eyes widen in genuine shock, while Emmanuel pauses with his coffee mug in midair.

“Counterfeit?” he asks.

“Probably printed in Europe and imported.”

“We don’t have counterfeit money,” Guerline says. “We don’t have . . . money.”

And yet, Angelique had.

“Did Angelique ever talk about her friend from the summer camp, Livia Samdi?”

Twin nos.

“Do you know Livia?”

More head shakes.

“Ever hear her name mentioned, maybe when Angelique was talking to another one of her friends, or maybe you came home early to find a new girl visiting your apartment?”

Guerline shakes her head, more emphatically this time.

Emmanuel hesitates. “One day, I overheard LiLi, on the phone. She was trying to calm someone down. ‘I know, I know,’ she kept repeating. Then, ‘I’m working on it. Please trust me.’”

“And?” I prod.

“And then Angelique spotted me. She turned away, ended the call. It was only later that it occurred to me, the way she was holding the phone, it wasn’t right.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her iPhone is flat, like everyone else’s. This phone, the way she had her hand wrapped around it . . . It had to be smaller, thicker. Like a flip phone.”

“An after-hours phone,” I fill in.

“What is an after-hours phone?” Guerline asks.

“Like a burner phone. We suspected Angelique had a second phone, hence she left her original phone in her backpack.” Completing her disguise as Livia, I think, while also eliminating the chance her personal cell would be discovered on her or used to trace her movements.

“Are you sure she wasn’t speaking to one of her other friends, Marjolie or Kyra?” I say to Emmanuel.

“I don’t think so. Her tone . . .” He shrugs. “When she saw me, she looked guilty. Why would she feel guilty about talking to her friends?”

Emmanuel is an astute young man. I’m willing to bet he’s right, Angelique was speaking on a burner phone with Livia, and once again, I’m struck by her level of secrecy regarding that relationship . . . But I don’t think now is the time to go into that level of detail with Angelique’s family.

“I don’t think Angelique was trying to run away or disappear,” I say at last. “It sounds like she had befriended a girl, Livia, from the summer rec program. Livia’s own background . . . Let’s just say it appears she was in some kind of trouble and Angelique was trying to help her. So much so, Angelique was dressed as Livia that final afternoon in November. That’s why the police originally couldn’t find evidence of Angelique departing her school. She did it disguised as Livia Samdi.”

Guerline’s eyes widen. She clearly doesn’t know what to say. Beside her, Emmanuel appears equally shocked.

“What does this Livia girl have to say for herself?” Guerline asks at last.

“She also went missing. A few months later. Except her family never reported it, which is why the police didn’t make the connection. The family assumed the girl had run away.”

“This girl is trouble?”

“I don’t know. But her brother is a known drug dealer.”

“My Angelique did not do drugs!”

I hold up a placating hand. “No one is saying she did. For that matter, there’s no evidence Livia did drugs either. Like Angelique, Livia was a gifted student, except her talents were in computer design and 3D printing.”

Guerline appears even more lost. Emmanuel recovers first.

“LiLi was smart. And she could draw, but like freehand. I never saw her do anything on a computer.”

“This girl, with the drug family,” says Guerline. “Could the fake money be hers? Because my Angelique . . . Children make mistakes, yes, but she is a good girl. That kind of money only comes from bad things. And LiLi is not that kind of bad.”

Now it’s my turn to feel stupid. When we’d found the money, we hadn’t known about Livia yet. But in retrospect, it does seem more probable that the money came from Livia or her drug-dealing brother. Maybe Angelique was keeping it safe for her.

Or as a safety net? That kind of money, thousands of dollars, would definitely be something Johnson—fine, J.J.—would want back. But more to the point, the fake hundreds . . . Had Angelique and Livia realized they were counterfeit? Two intelligent girls, both known for their attention to detail?

Had Livia realized her brother had gotten himself into something much more dangerous than street-corner distribution? She could have stolen the money, asked her friend Angelique to hold it for her. Or . . .

My mind is starting to spin. I feel like I suddenly have too much information to work with—except again, how to make sense of it all?

I rest my elbows on the table, peering hard at Guerline and Emmanuel. “Anything else you might have heard or remember from the time leading up to Angelique’s disappearance? The smallest little thing that maybe didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but now, looking back? Snippets of conversation, e-mail? Hurried exchanges? Odd behavior?”

“She was quiet,” Emmanuel volunteers at last. “I found her one day curled up on the sofa. Just sitting . . . No TV, phone. When I asked, she said she was tired. Another afternoon . . .”

He hesitates, ducks his head.

“Speak,” Guerline demands.

“She was holding the picture of our mom. She’d taken it down and was staring at it. She looked . . . sad. Very sad. When she saw me, she put it back. Clearly, she’d been crying. I assumed she was feeling homesick. Sometimes, I am homesick, too, and I don’t even remember home anymore.”

Aunt Guerline reaches over and takes her nephew’s hand.

“When was this?” I ask.

“I don’t know. We were back in school. Fall sometime.”

I nod. I’d already inspected the framed photo during my first search of their apartment, seen the love letter tucked behind the faded picture. Neither child had seen their mother in nearly a decade, but clearly, they still yearned for her. Maybe enough that whatever was going on in Angelique’s life, she didn’t feel she could tell her aunt, so had sought comfort from her mother’s photo instead.

I take a deep breath. “Two mornings ago, Angelique was spotted at a wireless store in Mattapan Square.”

Guerline gasps, then appears outraged. Emmanuel as well. This little disclosure is going to get me into a truckload of trouble with Lotham, but I feel it’s necessary. “As she was walking away, she dropped a fake ID. They’re studying it now. I think you should look at it, too.” I point my chin at Emmanuel. “In case she used some kind of code again. You know her best.”

Emmanuel nods immediately. Despite his young age, he’s serious, even solemn. In this moment, I see shades of the older sister he described to me. Problem solvers, doers. Life hasn’t always been kind to them, but it’s made them stronger, more determined. Opportunity isn’t given, it must be made.

Which makes me wonder again what Angelique had been up to. Helping a friend made sense, and explained the stash of money as well as her deception, dressing up as Livia to head for some mysterious meeting that Friday. But what had happened next to keep Angelique away from home permanently, while still not being enough to save her friend, who’d disappeared three months later?

I think back to what Charlie had said. If they were being held against their will, but still alive, then they must have value. But what kind of value did two fifteen-year-old girls have? Beyond the obvious, of course, in the sex trade. I felt like it had to have something to do with the counterfeit money, which was our other outlier. Maybe their captors knew the girls had fake hundreds, wanted them to fetch more? Make more? Except that was a pretty tall order given it took highly skilled experts to pull off quality bills.

My mind spins through possibilities, but none of them make sense.

Livia is the key to understanding what happened in the past, I decide now. She’s the missing girl no one even knew was missing, and yet was probably also the original target. Which leave us with Angelique, given her recent appearances, as the best hope for finding both girls in the future. Before time runs out.

With that in mind, I finally organize some semblance of next steps.

“I’m going to call Detective Lotham,” I announce, rising from the booth. “Ask him to bring over Angelique’s fake license. Emmanuel, you stay here to study it.”

I hesitate, glance at Guerline.

“I must make some calls,” she volunteers. “Return to work. I can come back . . .”

“It’s not a problem. Emmanuel will contact you when we’re done.” I imagine she doesn’t get many vacation days, and after the events of the past year, she probably can’t afford to take any more.

Guerline climbs out of the booth and heads for the door.

I step away from the table to call Lotham. I update him on the morning’s developments, then hold my phone far from my ear as the yelling begins.