Lisa Gardner - Before She Disappeared

Beside me, Lotham nods. “She ever play around with, I don’t know . . . plastic stamps of images, flowers, U.S. Treasury symbols, whatever.”

Mr. Riddenscail taps his nose again. “Umm, no.”

“But she had the ability. Could’ve even been working on some side projects at home?”

“Ability, yes. Side projects, no. Whatever work Livia did was performed here. The design software is licensed; the kids can’t access it on their own computers. Let alone, for any of these products”—he nods toward the plastic chunks in my hand—“you need a 3D printer. Again, not the kind of thing Livia would have at home.”

“And you knew every project your kids worked on?” Lotham presses, while I stare at the spirals in my hand and digest this latest statement.

“3D printing isn’t cheap. Of course I monitor it. Have you seen our school budget? Plus, my job is to review my students’ drawings over and over again. You only want to print when you’re absolutely ready. Otherwise it wastes time and materials. Have you seen a 3D printer, Detective?”

Lotham shakes his head. Without another word, Mr. Riddenscail turns and leads us to a side door in the classroom, which opens to a smaller room dominated by a large, fully enclosed glass box with all sorts of mechanical parts in the middle. It looks to weigh a ton and cost a fortune, which I guess goes to Mr. Riddenscail’s point that it’s not the sort of thing any teenager is going to have at home.

“This is the uPrint,” he says.

“Can’t you print a plastic gun?” I ask, because thinking of Livia’s family and my own recent encounter with them, this strikes me as a highly valued commodity.

“Can you fashion a plastic gun? Yes. Do we do that here? No.” Mr. Riddenscail sounds firm on the subject.

“But it would be highly valuable,” I press. “Particularly in this neighborhood.”

“No.”

Lotham raises a brow at the reply, causing Mr. Riddenscail to elaborate: “Most plastic guns are good for a single shot. And given the lack of rifling on the barrel, it has to be up close and personal. Now, if you needed to sneak a gun through security—either at an airport, courthouse, for a Jason Bourne kind of deal, okay. But I know my kids’ lives, and no gangbanger wants a small, single-shot pistol. They want firepower. The bigger, the better. Nothing made here is going to be impressive enough for their needs. Plus most of the drug dealers out there, just because they can pull the trigger, doesn’t mean they can aim. Hence their love of automatic rifles. Plastic guns are a finesse tool. Around here”—Mr. Riddenscail shrugs—“that’s not what’s needed.”

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.

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.