Page 32 of So Bleak

Faith rolled her eyes and ignored the crowd as she walked to the sniffling, dejected young man sitting on the patio. Behind her, she heard Howard explaining that Turk was a police dog, and if the looky-loos didn’t have anything better to do than gawk, then they could at least gawk with their mouths shut.

She took a seat opposite the cameraman and smiled empathetically. “Hey, kiddo.”

“Kiddo” was significantly younger than Lila, probably in his early twenties. Young enough that Faith could actually call him a kiddo.

His grief was just as real as anyone Faith’s age, though, and she immediately dismissed him as a suspect. He wiped his eyes and said, “I don’t know what happened. She was fine. She was being her usual beautifully bitchy self, and then…” His lip trembled, and he wiped tears from his eyes again.

“Beautifully bitchy? Can’t say I’ve heard those two words together before.”

He shrugged. “I mean, she had an attitude, but I liked that about her. She was sassy. And she had a smile you wouldn’t believe. Have you heard of Foodgurl?”

“No. Is that her vlog?”

“It’s her channel. She did short reviews of food places. None of the high-class holier-than-thou bullshit. The concept was that she was a normal person giving an honest opinion about food without trying to sound like she was better than anyone else.”

“But with an attitude?”

“Yeah.” He chuckled. “Yeah, she acted a little different in front of the camera, but whatever. That’s how you make money nowadays. She never lied about anything. She just had her online persona and then her real self.”

“I get that. What’s your name?”

“Henri.”

“Ah. French?”

“Yeah, but I don’t speak French. I grew up here. I’m named after my great-grandfather. He was part of the French Resistance during World War Two.”

“Good for him.”

“Shitty for him, actually. He lost his left arm and half of his left leg.”

“Ah. I’m sorry to hear that.”

Henri shrugged. “That’s war, right? People killing each other over stupid shit.”

“In my experience, that’s always the reason.”

“Yeah.” He sniffed and looked over Faith’s shoulder at the crowd in front of the restaurant.

“You want to go somewhere else?” she asked. “Where you don’t have to look at all that?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s fine. I would be doing the same thing right now if it wasn’t Lila in there. Hell, Lila would be standing next to me.” His lip trembled again. “Damn. I loved her, man. I fucking loved her.”

He wept silently, and Faith’s heart went out to him. This was the worst part. An old mentor of hers had told her that what made murderers so terrible wasn’t what they did to the people they killed but what they did to the loved ones they didn’t kill. Seeing Henri’s shoulders shaking with grief brought that point home for her.

“We’ll find the person who did this,” she promised him. “We’ll bring them to justice.”

“Yeah, but you won’t bring her back.”

His words cut Faith like a knife. She lowered her eyes and said softly, “No.”

He sniffed and said, “I’m sorry. I know it’s not your fault. It’s just… fuck…” He took a deep breath and said, “You want to know what happened, right?”

“Yes, please.”

“Okay. Well… we were shooting the review. The way it works is we take a few camera reels… Not actually reels, but you know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

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