Lisa Gardner - Before She Disappeared

I don’t have to open the front gate. It’s already collapsed, the front corner gouged deep into the earth. I shimmy around it, kicking a deflated soccer ball that plows into a pile of empty booze bottles. I startle from the noise, snag my jacket on the rusty chain link, and tear a hole.

“Shit!” I curse, then belatedly catch myself. Relaxed and focused. The family I need to speak with are looking for reasons not to like me, excuses not to help. My job is not to give them one.

I pick my way up the front steps. One of the boards is so rotted, I skip over it completely, landing harder than I would like on the one above. I feel it shake upon impact, and clamber up the remaining stairs in a burst of adrenaline.

The second I hit the landing, the front door opens. A young Black male stands before me in a white tank top, and sagging dark jeans. He wears his hair in a million braids, curving back from his face before falling like a curtain to his shoulders. He has a giant diamond stud in one ear, and enough ink sleeving his forearms and twining around his neck to serve as a second shirt. Even looking straight at him, it’s impossible to see behind the confusion of tattoos, jewelry, and hair extensions. Urban camouflage.

“We don’t want you here,” he states. His eyes are dark and flat.

“I’m looking for Mrs. Samdi,” I say.

“We don’t want you here.”

“It’s regarding her daughter, Livia.”

“Get the fuck off my property.”

“Do you own the whole house?” I ask him curiously. “What a great accomplishment. And at such a young age, too.”

A single slow blink. “No white bitches wanted here.”

“Okay, but I’m a cheap white bitch. Surely that counts for something? My specialty is locating missing persons, free of charge. I’m already in the area looking for Angelique Badeau. Maybe you know her?”

“Fuck off.”

“Are you Livia’s brother? Uncle? Random acquaintance? I understand from the police the family believes Livia ran away. I respectfully disagree. I think her vanishing act has something to do with Angelique’s disappearance and I’d like to help both of them.”

“You hard of hearing, lady? Go. The fuck. Away.” Two steps forward now. His tough words aren’t getting the job done, so he’s throwing his body behind them. He’s five ten and a solid one eighty of sculpted muscle. I have exactly . . . nothing . . . on him.

“I’m here for Mrs. Samdi,” I repeat, more quickly now. “If she wants me to go, I’ll go. But not before I see her. Look, I’m not here to jam you up or judge your family. I don’t work for the police, the press, anyone. I’m here solely for the missing and I need just a few minutes of your mother’s time. Five. Five minutes. Who knows, by the end, maybe both she and I can do some good.”

The boy—who has to be Livia’s older brother—opens his mouth again. His hands are fisted, his throat corded. I’m already leaning back, wishing I’d left about two seconds earlier, when a tired, ragged voice comes from inside the house.

“Let her in, Johnson.”

My greeter scowls, loosens his fists.

“Johnson?” I mouth at him, one brow arched.

“J.J.,” he snaps back.

J.J. lets me pass by, nodding across the street at the many loitering, heavily muscled youths still keeping watch. His friends? His gang? It doesn’t really matter. O’Shaughnessy had pegged Livia’s brother as a drug dealer. Which makes it in my own best interest to keep my head down and eyes on the floor as he leads me down the hall to the rear of the building.

We emerge into an open area, hazy with cigarette smoke. To my right is a kitchen, with almost every available surface covered with discarded food containers and supersized bottles of booze. Something big, brown, and shiny skitters across the floor. Then two more somethings.

I swallow slowly. Going from Guerline’s bright-colored, homey apartment to this makes it hard to believe Livia and Angelique had much in common. And yet . . .

I turn my attention to the card table positioned against the wall on the left. A gaunt African American woman sits there, her face wreathed in smoke from her burning cigarette. She wears a faded blue floral housedress and the heavily aged features of a lifetime drinker.

I pull out the folding chair across from her, and have a seat. “Roseline Samdi?”

The woman takes a long drag, then taps the ash off the end of her cigarette in the remnants of a beer can. “You’re the woman? The one looking for Badeau?”

Roseline’s first few words sound typically Boston. But when she delivers Badeau , her island heritage gives her away. The name comes out both hard and soft, an echo of palm trees and drifting clouds.

“Did you immigrate as a child, or more recently?” I ask. I’m trying hard not to wrinkle my nose against the stench of spoiled food, unwashed clothes, and human sweat. If I lived here, I’d smoke all day, too, just to cover the smell.

“When I was little. I came with my mamè , thirty years ago.”

It takes me a moment to figure out that Roseline isn’t that much older than me. But to look at her . . .

On impulse, I reach over and clasp her hand. She’s too startled to pull away.

“Nine years sober. Nine years, seven months. I still miss it all the time. It sucks, doesn’t it? To want something so badly, when you know you shouldn’t.”

She doesn’t speak right away. Her skin is jaundiced. Her expression bleak. But in her eyes, I think I see a flash of gratitude.

“I made it a whole year once. Can’t say it was my best year, spending every damn day hurtin’ and wantin’. But afterwards.” She takes another drag of her cigarette, nods slowly. “Afterwards, I was sorry I let it go.”

“We’ve all been there.”

“So that’s it, then? You’re an addict, I’m an addict. I might as well tell you everything ?”

The bitterness in her words is sharp enough for me to release her hand and sit back. This isn’t going to be an easy conversation or a friendly one. Might as well get it done.

“Did Livia know Angelique Badeau?”

“No.” It’s a hard sound. Like she’s exhaling very quickly, getting the word as far away from her as possible.

“Did Livia ever mention Angelique from the summer camp at the rec center?”

“No.”

“Why fashion camp?”

Roseline pauses, blinks. Her cigarette is almost burned down. She bangs out a fresh one from the pack beside her, using the old to light the new, without even the slightest pause in between.

“Why not?” she asks at last.

“She didn’t talk to you about it? Say how much she wanted to go, loved going, was so happy she went? I mean, you paid for it, right? Surely you wanted a reason.”

Roseline pauses. Inhale. Exhale. Tap. She didn’t pay for it. I can see that from her expression. Livia must’ve qualified through some program for low-income families. Meaning her mother never thought to ask a question about her enrollment?

In the end, Roseline offers a single, fatalistic shrug. In other words, Livia did go to fashion camp, and her own mother never bothered to find out why. I notice Roseline’s cigarette is now shaking slightly in her hand. She’s not as impervious as she wants to appear.

“Did Livia have a friend who was taking it?” I press. “Or maybe an obsession with Project Runway ? Aspirations to design for a living?”

Inhale, exhale, tap. Finally. “Livia liked to make things.”

“Make things . . . So fashion camp was the closest she could come to . . . making something?” Which is interesting, because I’d already assumed Angelique hadn’t been into fashion either. For her, it appeared to be about the opportunity to do art. Maybe for Livia, it had been design?