Before She Disappeared(2)

My lungs are no longer burning. My clothes are no longer heavy. I feel only reverence as I curl my fingers around the door handle and pull.

The door opens easily.

Except . . . doors can’t open underwater. Wet suit. Oxygen tank. What is wrong, what is wrong . . . My brain belatedly sounds the alarm: Danger! Think, think, think! Except I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

I am inhaling now. Breathing in the lake. Welcoming it inside my lungs. I have become one with it, or it has become one with me.

As Lani Whitehorse turns her head.

She stares at me with her empty eye sockets, gaping mouth, skeletal face.

“Too late,” she tells me. “Too late.”

Then her bony arm thrusts out, snatches my wrist.

I kick, try to pull back. But I’ve lost my grip on the door handle. I have no leverage. My air is gone and I’m nothing but lake water and weedy grasses.

She pulls me into the truck cab with unbelievable strength.

One last scream. I watch it emerge as an air bubble that floats up, up, up. All that is left of me.

Lani Whitehorse slams the door shut.

And I join her forever in the gloom.



* * *



—

Rumble. Screech. A sudden booming announcement: “South Station, next stop!”

I jerk awake as the train lurches to a halt, blinking and looking down at my perfectly dry clothes.

A dream. Nightmare. Something. Not the first or the last in my line of work. It leaves me with a film of dread as I grab my bags and follow the rest of the passengers off the train.

I’d found Lani Whitehorse three weeks ago, locked in her vehicle at the bottom of a lake. After months of intensive research on an Indian reservation where my presence was never welcomed by the locals nor wanted by the tribal police. But I’d stumbled upon the case online and been moved by her mother’s steadfast assurance that Lani would never leave her own daughter. Lani might be a screw-up with horrible taste in men, but she was still a mom. Why people assumed those things couldn’t go together, I’ll never know.

So I’d moved to the area, became a bartender at Lani’s former workplace, and started my own investigation.

Lani’s mom hugged me the day the police finally dragged the Chevy truck out of the lake in a deluge of muck and horror. Wailing, crying relief as Lani was finally brought home. I waited around for the funeral, standing outside the small crowd of mourners, as proving yourself right almost always means proving someone else wrong and therefore rarely wins you many friends.

I did what I needed to do. Then I headed to the local library, where I booted up the computer and returned to the national chat rooms where family members, concerned neighbors, and crazy people like me compare notes on various missing persons cases. There are so many. Too many, sometimes, for local resources. So, more and more, people like me have been stepping into the vacuum.

I read. I posted a few questions. And in a matter of hours, I knew where I was headed next.

Like I said, so many missing persons cases. Too many.

Which has brought me here, to Boston, a city I’ve never visited. I have no idea where I am or what I’m doing, but that’s hardly new. Now, I follow the mass of humanity hustling across the train platform to the exit signs, all of my worldly possessions packed into a single piece of luggage rolling behind me. Once I had a house, a car, a white picket fence. But time erodes and now . . .

Let’s just say I’ve learned to travel light.

Out on the bright sidewalk, I stop, blink, then shutter my eyes completely. Walking straight out into downtown Boston feels like an assault on the senses. People, shrieking horns, crosswalks. The stench of diesel fuel, fried fish, harbor brine. I’ve forgotten the crushing feel of the concrete jungle, even one with a glittering waterfront.

I work on taking a deep, shuddering breath. This is my new home until I complete my mission. I exhale slowly. Then I open my eyes and square my shoulders. The last of my nightmare and travel daze falls away. I’m ready to get to it, which is good given the flood of annoyed pedestrians shoving past me.

From my worn leather messenger bag, I withdraw the file filled with papers I printed out days ago. It includes a map of Boston, articles on city demographics, and a photo of a shyly smiling girl with smooth dark skin, gorgeous brown eyes, and deep black hair cascading down in a mass of carefully groomed ringlets. Fifteen at the time of her disappearance. Sixteen now.

Meet Angelique Lovelie Badeau. Angel to her friends. LiLi to her family.

Angelique disappeared eleven months ago from Mattapan, Boston. Walked out of her school on a Friday afternoon in November and then . . . Poof. No sightings. No leads. No breaks in the case. For eleven whole months.

Bostonians will tell you that Mattapan is that kind of neighborhood. Rough. Poor. Filled with hardworking souls, of course, and a rich cultural heritage thanks to having the country’s largest Haitian population outside of Florida. But also a hotbed of gang activity and violent crime. If you want to get shot or stabbed, Murderpan, as the locals call it, is the neighborhood for it. Which is where I now plan to rent a place, find a job, and question the neighbors.

And I hope, through sheer guts, determination, and blind luck, I will find a girl the rest of the world seems to have forgotten already.

I’m not a police officer.

I’m not a private investigator.

I have no special skills or training.