Page 23 of Before She Disappeared

“It won’t work.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I have permission from the family. I also have the right to ask questions.”

“Sounds like you have this all planned out.”

“Not my first outing.”

“So I’ve also heard.”

“Did you call the names I gave Officer O’Shaughnessy?”

“I decided to check you out for myself. Then hear what others had to say.”

“Good attitude for a detective.”

“Not my first outing either.”

“So?”

Detective Lotham shrugs his massive shoulders. “Sounds to me like you’re about five minutes from cracking this case and finding a teenage girl the rest of us have clearly been too stupid to locate. Please continue.”

I smile faintly. “Your original working theory was that Angelique had gone off on her own volition Friday night, to somewhere unknown by her aunt.” I pause. “And most likely her brother. Because while Emmanuel clearly knows something, he also loves his sister and would’ve told you by now if he knew where she’d gone on Friday.”

“And you got all this from meeting the family for what... five minutes?”

“More like twenty.”

Detective Lotham regards me for a moment, his flat expression unchanged. “Go home.”

“This is my home. I rented a room above Stoney’s.”

“It’s wrong to give the family false hope.”

“How do you know it’s false?”

“Because you’re out of your league. Because you only thought to check security feeds, when this area is surveilled by way more than cameras. This isn’t the-middle-of-nowhere USA. It’s fucking Boston, and we know what we’re doing.”

“So where’s Angelique?”

“Go home,” he repeats.

“Do you have LPR data?” A fresh thought occurs to me as I consider his surveillance comment. LPR is a license-plate reading system. Usually installed on police cruisers, parking enforcement vehicles, maybe even city buses. The technology continuously captures license plates as the vehicles drive around, creating snapshots of every single car parked at a given time in a given place. More surveillance data, as the detective said. I’ve heard of such things but never worked in an area sizable enough or sophisticated enough to have one.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss an active investigation,” Detective Lotham informs me stiffly.

Meaning yes, Boston uses an LPR system. Which would’ve given investigators every car, van, truck, taxi, Uber driver, and city vehicle that had been in the area. Enabling detectives to identify the owners, run background, and tag criminal histories in the days and weeks following Angelique’s disappearance. So much data. Way more than the-middle-of-nowhere USA, as the detective put it. And yet, eleven months later, not enough to help. I rock back on my heels, contemplating.

“All the cameras, surveillance,” I consider out loud. “You should’ve been able to retrace Angelique’s exact steps by now. Even if she exited the school in this blind spot, the minute she walked right or left, she would’ve appeared on camera. Whether she was on foot, in the passenger side of a car, tucked in the back of an Uber—something.”

Detective Lotham says nothing.

“She could’ve caught a bus or walked to the T stop,” I continue musing out loud. “But you would’ve tracked that, too. Her path to the station, then standing around, backpack free, wearing her new clothes. Of course once she boarded and swiped her student pass, that would create yet another trail of breadcrumbs to follow.”

“Assuming she swiped her card.” Lotham appears bored with the conversation. “It’s possible she used cash for a single-use ticket. Then again, we got cameras on buses, subways, and trains as well. And a whole MBTA police force well versed in studying such visuals. Boston is clever that way.”

He’s being sarcastic, but I take the assessment seriously. “In other words, Angelique didn’t take mass transit because you would’ve spotted her. Likewise, she couldn’t have walked away and she couldn’t have driven away. Which leaves...”

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