Page 46 of Before She Disappeared

Lotham squats down to match her seated height. “He couldn’t identify the girl as Angelique. She was wearing a red baseball cap, pulled low, and he wasn’t paying that much attention. But if you look at the photo on the fake ID...”

“My Angelique,” Guerline states again. She sighs, and there is a wealth of sorrow in that single exhale.

“Was she alone?” Emmanuel asks. Smart kid.

“The attendant doesn’t remember seeing anyone else. We’re grabbing video from inside the store, as well as the general area.” Lotham rises once more to standing, knees popping in the silence. He rubs one absently.

“So... She was walking around the street alone. She entered the store alone. She had a phone alone...” Emmanuel looks at the detective, his pain and confusion clearly evident.

“We are taking this very seriously.” O’Shaughnessy speaks up from the table. “We’re going to find her.”

“Emmanuel,” Detective Lotham says more quietly, “even if your sister was alone, it doesn’t mean she wasn’t under duress. If she’s feeling threatened enough to write a coded message, it may mean she knows eyes are on her at all times. It may mean she feels like she must do whatever it is she’s doing in order to keep others safe.”

“Help us?” Emmanuel asks. He looks too young for this conversation. I truly wish he were too young for this conversation.

“My niece has been kidnapped?” Guerline speaks up. “Somebody... took her? After school? And others? But her friends... We have seen her friends.”

“What’s important is that Angelique’s alive and has some level of autonomy,” Lotham states. He doesn’t address the issue of Angelique’s friends being accounted for, because sadly, there are too many other terrible possibilities. Human trafficking. Angelique being abducted with other pretty young girls. Or swept up in something beyond her control. Maybe she had met the wrong boy. Or made the wrong new friend. The help us message is an important break in the case. But it’s also an ominous development. That we are dealing with a situation far graver than a lone teenager having disappeared or run away.

“Have either of you seen this fake ID?” Lotham asks Emmanuel and Guerline. His gaze lingers on Emmanuel. But both shake their heads.

I bring over four glasses of water to the booth, passing them out in a show of hospitality that also allows me a closer look at the black-and-white photocopy of the fake ID.

At a glance, I can tell this ID is an old-fashioned Massachusetts license, versus the newer Real IDs that are required for airport security. The photocopy is of the front of the ID only and not a good-quality reproduction. Clearly, the attendant at the cybercafé had been purely going through the motions.

“Ahem,” Lotham says. I glance up to find him staring at me, my water delivery not having fooled him for a second.

“Does that cybercafé still have the original ID?” I ask. As long as I’m busted, I might as well go all in.

“No.”

“What about the essay, login instructions, other notes she handed over?”

“Attendant threw them away. They were scanned and uploaded. No reason to hang on to the hard copies.”

“Why Roxbury? Has she used that internet café before?”

Lotham doesn’t object to this question. Instead, both he and O’Shaughnessy glance at the family. Once again, Emmanuel does the answering.

“She never mentioned it to me. It’s not close to our apartment, or on the way home from school. Or”—he is a thoughtful young man—“near her friends.”

“What about her new friend?” Again, as long as I’ve joined the party. “The one she met at the rec center that summer?”

“I do not know that friend,” Emmanuel says.

Guerline speaks up. “What new friend?”

That I stay out of. Though it’s difficult given the glare I receive from Lotham. The police like to withhold as much information as possible, even from the families. I understand; nine times out of ten, the family is part of the problem, not the solution. But I’ve also worked cases where such communication gaps led to stalls in the investigation. If someone had just mentioned discovery A to family member B, then investigator C would’ve learned immediately about the impossibility of that claim.

Being an untrained, inexperienced civilian, as Detective Lotham likes to put it, I’m not bound by department policy. Instead, I get to follow my gut. Given the genuine shock, grief, and fear I see on Guerline’s and Emmanuel’s faces, I think they have no idea what happened to Angelique. Whatever mess she’d made or stumbled into or gotten tangled up in, they would like to know as much as anyone.

I also like to think: They would love her anyway. But maybe that has more to do with my needs than theirs.

“Angelique’s friends claim she was different the fall she disappeared,” Lotham provides at last. “Distracted. Maybe by someone she’d met during the summer program at the rec center. Did you notice anything?”

Guerline doesn’t answer right away. On the table, O’Shaughnessy is still clasping her hand in his. Now, he gives her fingers a reassuring squeeze.

“My Angel, she was... quieter,” Guerline concedes at last. “On her computer more. I assumed it was school. Her classes are very demanding, yes, and she insists on taking even more, over the internet. She wants to get ahead. This is a good thing. I did not worry. I did not think to worry.”

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