Линвуд Баркли - Find You First

“Roberta.”

Roberta stopped. “Yes, child?”

“What’s the plan? I mean, you can’t keep me a prisoner here forever.”

“No,” said Roberta. “No, I don’t suppose we can.”

Paris, France

It took Bonnie Trumble a while to figure out where she should go to report a missing person.

She was living in the Third Arrondissement, in the Marais district, around the corner from the Picasso museum. She and her bestie had found a place through Airbnb, had been saving their money for three years so they could come over here for a couple of months. Growing up in Lackawanna, just outside Buffalo, it was hard to imagine a place more exotic than Paris, although, when you lived in Lackawanna, the bar was not set all that high. All the way back to the ninth grade, shortly after they had become fast friends in their first year of high school, they had talked about going to the City of Lights someday.

When they finished high school, instead of going straight to college — their parents’ choice for them, of course — they decided this was their chance. They would rent a place, right in Paris, and spend two months there. Soak it up, live like the locals. And when the two months were over, they would go back to their boring Lackawanna lives.

And it had been going great. They did all the touristy things the first week they were here. The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral, although at that last one all they could do was walk around it, what with the fire and all a couple of years ago. Once they had the sightseeing stuff out of their system, they settled into more of a routine. Making meals at home — they were going to wipe out their savings pretty fast eating in the cafés every day — and going out to shop every day to get what they needed. Oh, man, the bread! Who could have guessed something as simple as bread could be that good? And you had to shop every day, because everything over here was smaller. The cupboards were small. You put a couple of containers of yogurt in the fridge and it was full. You didn’t exactly take out the car and go to Costco and bring home a six-gallon jug of olives.

Things were going so well.

And then her friend Katie disappeared.

While they were best friends, there were days when they wanted to do their own thing. On this particular Wednesday, Bonnie wanted to spend the day wandering the Pompidou Centre. She was into modern art, stuff that was more offbeat, but Katie had had enough of museums. “Knock yourself out,” she told Bonnie. “I’m gonna take my book and go someplace and get a latte and take three hours to drink it. I’ll find us something for dinner and get it ready for when you get back.”

When Bonnie returned shortly before six, Katie was not there.

That was not necessarily alarming. Katie could have decided to leave her shopping duties until late afternoon. Then it got to be seven, and then eight, and with each passing hour Bonnie’s anxiety level increased exponentially.

But it was more than Katie being missing.

She had discovered something very weird about the apartment. Something so weird she felt she needed to talk to the police about it tonight. Not tomorrow morning. Right fucking now.

It had never occurred to Bonnie that she might need to get in touch with the police while she was in Paris. What were they even called? Gendarmes? Policier? Where was the station? And if she could find one, would she be able to find a police officer who knew English really well? Because, let’s face it, her French was pretty basic.

It turned out that every arrondissement had its own police headquarters, so Bonnie was going to have to find the one for the third. The building where she and Katie were living had two other rental units. She banged on the door of the first one, found no one home, but got lucky with the second, which was occupied by an elderly couple from Toronto who took the place for half the year. They were fluent in French, and offered to go with Bonnie to the police station in case she had any trouble communicating with the authorities.

Once the Canadian couple had paved the way for her, a police officer in his fifties, named Henri and dressed plainly in jeans, a white dress shirt, and a sports jacket, offered to sit down with Bonnie and hear her story. She wondered, given that he was not wearing a traditional uniform, whether he was some kind of detective, but whatever. She wanted someone who would listen, and fortunately, he spoke English.

Henri:What is your friend’s name?

Bonnie:Katie Gleave. Um, Katie Frances Gleave. We’re both from Lackawanna, New York. It’s near Buffalo? We’re both nineteen.

Henri:And what brings you to Paris?

Bonnie:We wanted to experience it, you know? Living here?

Henri:Of course.

Bonnie:She’s gone.

Henri:Tell me when this happened.

Bonnie:I went to the Pompidou for the day. Katie just wanted to hang out. She was going to get something for our dinner. But she wasn’t there when I got home and she hasn’t come back.

Henri:She has not been gone very long. Not even overnight. Did you try calling her?

Bonnie:I texted her, phoned her. Nothing.

Henri:Perhaps... she has found a boyfriend?

Bonnie:No, no way. That’s not what happened. And even if it did, she would let me know. She wouldn’t make me worry like this. But there’s more.

Henri: Okay.

Bonnie:Her stuff is all gone.

Henri:Her stuff?

Bonnie:Her clothes.

Henri:Ah, I see. Maybe she has decided to go home, to go back to America. Maybe things were not working out between the two of you?

Bonnie:And the sheets from her bed.

Henri:The sheets?

Bonnie:Why would she take the sheets off her bed? What sense does that make? They weren’t hers. They belong to the people who own the apartment.

Henri:That is strange.

Bonnie:And everything in the bathroom. Not just her stuff. All of mine, too. I mean, if she was going to take off, which I don’t think she did, I could see her taking her own toothbrush, but why would she take mine?

Henri:That... is curious.

Bonnie:But here’s the weirdest thing of all. The place has been cleaned.

Henri:Cleaned?

Bonnie:It’s like, cleaner than the first day we got the place. Everything’s sparkling. I mean, we’re not pigs, okay, but we’re not the tidiest people in the world, either. We’d kind of let things go for a while. I was thinking, later this week, I’d clean the bathroom and maybe run through the place with the Dyson, but now the place isn’t just clean, it’s been disinfected.

Henri:Disinfected?

Bonnie:Bleach. The place reeks of bleach.

Springfield, MA

The Pacer, with Chloe at the wheel and Miles sitting beside her, stopped at the end of the driveway. Charise was out of the limo and leaning up against the door, arms crossed, but when Miles got out of Chloe’s car, she straightened up.

“Mr. Cookson?”

Miles said, “Todd — Chloe’s half brother — wasn’t here. We’re going to try and find Todd’s mom. Chloe found an address for her online.”

“I’ll stay on your tail. When you need me, I’ll be there.”

“That’s great.”

“Mr. Cookson?”