Lotham nods shortly. It does make a crazy kind of sense but also leads us back to where we started. Livia had a talent, involving complex design and this enormous 3D printer. Which translates to what?
Plastic molds to assist in counterfeiting money? Except that’s only a tiny step of a highly involved and elaborate process. Let alone what kind of European counterfeiting ring is going to recruit a fifteen-year-old girl from inner-city Boston?
And yet, Angelique had counterfeit hundreds while also having a relationship—intimate or otherwise—with Livia. Angelique disappeared, and three months later Livia went missing. The girls were connected. The money was connected, which made it stand to reason that all of this—Livia’s skills, Angelique’s ambitions—also had to be connected.
Except how?
“Are there other teachers or classes Livia mentioned?” Lotham asks now.
A shrug. “You can check with Mrs. Jones, the school guidance counselor. She might know more.”
Lotham nods. He’d mentioned talking to a school counselor earlier this morning, so I’m guessing he’s already covered those bases.
“Anyone seem rattled or particularly bothered when Livia stopped coming to school?” I speak up.
Mr. Riddenscail shakes his head. “Which is a shame. She was a good kid. I’m sorry I can’t be of more help.”
There doesn’t seem to be much more to say or do. Lotham shakes the teacher’s hand. I follow suit. Then we’re once more in the hallway.
“Where does this leave us?” I grumble out loud.
Lotham frowns, purses his lips. “I don’t know,” he says at last.
“Livia’s and Angelique’s disappearances have to be related.”
“I don’t believe in that big a coincidence,” Lotham agrees.
“The cash in Angelique’s lamp, the burner phones. The girls were up to something that put them in contact with fake currency while helping them earn real dough. Something that clearly got them in trouble. Leading to Angelique’s disappearance, then Livia’s. Except why the vanishing act three months apart? Help us, Angelique’s note said. Meaning they’re together now? And in even more danger eleven months later? Held against their will? By whom? How . . .”
Suddenly, I stop walking. I grab Lotham’s hand. “The footage. Angelique’s last day of school. All the cameras that don’t show Angelique exiting the school or walking down the street.”
Lotham regards me quizzically.
“You didn’t know about Livia then. You watched all those video frames looking for Angelique. This whole case, back then, was about one missing girl. One disappearance. But knowing what we know now . . .”
Lotham comes to a dead halt as well. “We gotta watch those tapes again.”
I smile. “We should absolutely do that,” I say, with just the barest emphasis on we.
He doesn’t deny me. Together, we rush out the door.
CHAPTER 22
Lotham is the dedicated, workaholic detective I suspected him to be. He doesn’t take me to some evidence lab or special countersurveillance expert. He drives us to the BPD field office in Mattapan. District B-3, the blue sign reads, perched outside a fairly new-looking brick structure. It has a towering front façade that reminds me of Angelique’s high school. Apparently New England architecture is all about first appearances.
Inside the station, things are a bit more “TV cop show.” The drop ceiling, cheap flooring, security desk. Lotham waves at the front desk sergeant, having me sign in, while not offering an explanation. The female officer—older, with a hawkish face—looks bored. But I’m wide-eyed. My last few investigative gigs have involved places where the local police outpost was barely more than a double-wide. In comparison, this is swanky. Boston fucking PD for sure.
Lotham weaves his way down the hall, up the stairs. Once more, my job is to scamper behind him. I catch a glimpse of walls covered with Most Wanted photos juxtaposed with tributes to officers fallen in the line of duty. I don’t get to study any of it, as I quicken my pace to keep up with a boxer on a mission.
When we finally arrive at Lotham’s workspace, it turns out to be a desk in an open bullpen. The low walls of the cubicle bear everything from a few tucked-away photos of beaming schoolkids—his nieces and nephews, I would guess—to various police agency patches to several framed Muhammad Ali quotes. Angelique’s missing poster is pinned up in one corner, right where he’d see it every time he sat down in front of his computer. He doesn’t comment, and neither do I.
But I have a curious flushed sensation. I was right. He is who I thought he would be. Which is much more than I can say for most people.
Lotham fires his desktop to life. He disappears briefly, returns with two plastic cups of water. Then he snags a desk chair from the unoccupied cubicle behind him and drags it over. He doesn’t speak, just gestures. I take a seat. Pick up my water. Watch his fingertips fly across his keyboard.
I have only limited technical skills. But befitting a big-city detective, Lotham appears just as at home in front of a computer as he does out on the streets.
Next thing I know, he’s shoving back his chair, while gesturing me closer. “First—and best—camera angle,” he states. “Taken from the corner grocer across the street. You’ll see all the kids exit at end of day, Friday, November 5. Day of Angelique’s disappearance.”
I nod and focus on the screen as he hits play. I don’t get to hear the school bell, as the video offers images only. But I can pretty much fill in the audio, as on the screen bodies start pouring out the doors and down the steps.
It’s a fluid mass of teenage humanity. Almost all of it African American and clad in the same uniform of jeans, hoodies, flannel shirts. In the end, it’s not Angelique I spy first, but her curvy friend, Marjolie. Which leads to Kyra, and then, following shortly behind her, Angelique. The girl is wearing denim leggings with an oversized sweater in deep red. She has a bright-colored knit scarf wrapped tight around her neck, thin black gloves on her hands, and untied duck boots on her feet. Her navy blue backpack is slung over one shoulder. The weather is sunny but clearly cold.
Lotham taps the screen, in case I missed our target. I nod to let him know I see her. As we watch, she and her besties grow slightly larger, walking across the street toward the corner grocer. Then they disappear from view.
“After-school snack,” I mutter. Or drink, as it might have been in my case.
Lotham hits arrows. The video fast-forwards. Now we see all three girls reappear. There appears to be laughing, hugging. One dark head peels away. Taller, so I’m guessing Kyra. That leaves Marjolie and Angelique. Marjolie must return inside the store, as she simply disappears from the frame. But Angelique appears more fully, crossing the street toward her school. She doesn’t head for the front steps, however, but disappears, backpack slung over her shoulder as she strides down the long right side of the brick building, toward the infamous bolt-hole and side door, where she vanishes completely.