“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.