The Sketcher's Mark (Lara McBride Thrillers Book 1) (5 page)

For a moment, she second guessed herself and thought she had dialed the wrong number- then her stomach filled with the awful, bilious feeling of certainty and then she
knew
.  The person on the other end of the line was not her sister.

“Is Janelle alive?” she asked, her tone neutral, composed. The pause was interminable. Time bled out and the sound of the aircraft’s engines whined in her ears and became all she could hear. She tried to block it out and pushed the phone closer against her ear.

She could sense whoever was holding her sister’s phone right now and listening to her was deciding whether or not to speak.  She had to encourage him to engage with her, anything he said could help give him away. 

“I’m looking for my sister.  Her name is Janelle.  You’ve got her phone.  Can you tell me where she is?”

She had her pen in hand, ready to write down anything he said.  The hissing continued until finally a voice spoke in a disconnected, matter of fact tone.

“She’s my angel now,” Guillotine said and hung up.

Lara put the Skyphone back in its cradle and felt her stomach tighten as bile rose to the back of her throat.  She refused to vomit, focused on controlling her stomach and her reactions.  She started writing everything she had heard beyond the words.  The speaker was male.  From the depth and timbre of his voice, he sounded like he was in his thirties or maybe forties.  He spoke in English but with an accent- not American, not English, not French, something neutral, a mix of both, meaning it was probably not his first language but he was bilingual and that meant educated.  An Abductor could give away extremely important information about themselves simply by speaking.  References, phrases, sayings, and mispronunciations that were indicative of a certain region or ethnicity.  She was looking for anything to get a more specific idea of whom she was dealing with. He had called her an  “Angel”.  She underlined that word. Somehow, that was the thing that disturbed her the most.

Clearly, it meant something important to him.  He was attracted to her, the angel reference relating to Janelle’s beauty.

“She’s MY angel now.”  

“My”.  Possession.

“Angel”.  That was a powerful word, implied she was special to him.  Which meant he didn’t plan to hurt her.  For now, at least.

Lara set the pen down and looked out the window, trying to clear her mind.  In the distance she saw dark bruised storm clouds and realized she was heading straight for them.

Chapter Seven

Lara followed the signs that read “Sortie” as she walked with urgency through Charles De Gaulle airport.  She tried to ignore the smell of jet fuel that hung heavily to her clothes and skin and made her want to shower. The terminal was strangely cold and filled with people speaking languages she didn’t understand.  Working in Los Angeles, she had had no call to pick up French or any other European languages, but she could speak Spanish fluently.  Being dropped in to a new country surrounded by people and signs she didn’t understand already made her feel isolated and out of her depth.  But Lara McBride was not one to buckle under such things and instead of giving in to the easier road of feeling intimidated, she pushed the feeling deep down inside her as though she were feeding coal to the engine that drove her, powering herself forward.

On the plane, she had dreamed a dark vision of her and Janelle as children. In the waking nightmare, they were the same age, holding hands as they walked through the woods near their grandmother’s house in Northern California.  Sunlight spiked down through the branches from a bleached white sky and they moved slowly, as though Lara knew something was wrong. Janelle picked flowers, unaware.  Lara was scared, she could feel the fear build so fast it had cut off her ability to speak.  It was the silence that made her shiver.  There were no sounds of life in the woods, no sound at all but their feet cracking over fallen twigs and leaves and her breathing, which seemed deafeningly loud to her.  She looked down and saw the animals running ahead of them, away from something inexorably creeping toward them.  Something truly awful.  Lara turned and saw that night had fallen in the sky behind them. The dark was growing, greedily swallowing the sunlight with a hunger that would never be sated.  The animals were racing across the grass, terrified.  She looked to her left and saw a small rabbit curled on its side in pain, shivering in fear, its paws fluttering in spasms.  All she could do was watch helplessly as the dark began to infect the woods around her and poison the trees, swallowing them whole, banishing them to an inky black eternity.  The more this steadily rolling darkness fed, the faster it moved and the more it grew, swollen with the pregnant urge to consume and devour everything in her world. It moved in silence inevitably toward her. Coming specifically for her.  Coming for Janelle.

Lara had grabbed her Janelle’s hand and pulled her through the woods, running as fast as she could.  Suddenly, Janelle was even younger, smaller and helpless, her hand too small to keep hold of.  Her little feet were unable to keep up with her big sister’s strides.  Lara felt her slip from her grasp and, still running, turned to see Janelle fall. She wanted to save herself, get away to somewhere safe, somewhere with sound and light where the animals lived and she hated herself for feeling that way.  She slowed and wheeled around to go back for Janelle but every step felt like it took an age and the dark was coming in faster than she could ever move and her sister was right in its path. Lara’s movement had slowed to a painful crawl, even though everything else was moving at an abnormal, heightened speed.  Her skin burst in to chills, as though ants were scurrying over her skin.  Janelle lay silently screaming for her to help as the dark moved up behind her and paused, taunting Lara.  All she could do was watch, immobile, as her sister was taken by the fury of the night.  As it spilled over her, she screamed in her sleep, unable to stop the dark from swallowing them both.

Lara shook the dream from her mind, focused instead on going through Customs and being in the present.  She saw soldiers with machine guns and cops with pistols in their holsters and body armor.   This just reminded her she was here unarmed and that made her feel more vulnerable.  No matter, Paris was a big city and had its share of unsavory areas where she would be able to acquire a weapon if she needed one.  Like most criminal activities, all it took was money and the right place to use it.  Once she was waved through customs by a disinterested customs officer who looked like he was barely able to shave, she slung her bag over her shoulder and headed out to the Taxi rank. 

Lara pulled a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket, put one between her lips as she walked to the car at the back of the line and lit it. The cabbie was a local Parisian, stood beside his Mercedes, talking on his phone and enjoying his own cigarette.  Seeing Lara approach, he waved her back to the long line of travelers behind her, waiting for their turn at the head of the line.

“Non, Madam,” he protested, but she ignored him and opened the back door and dropped her bag inside anyway.  She spoke to him over the roof of the gleaming black car and showed him cash.

“You speak English?” she asked and saw him break for a second under her powerful gaze, then recover himself and stand his ground.

“Of course, yes,”  he said, irritation cracking his voice.

Lara pulled out the piece of paper with the address of Janelle’s hotel and handed it over the roof. 

“Can you take me there?”

“Yes, I know this place but you must go to the back of the line and wait with the others,” he said, studying the paper.

“I’m not a tourist.  Let’s go.”

Lara got in the back of the Mercedes while the driver continued to protest.  Seconds later, he got in the car and drove her in to Paris.

Chapter Eight

The Manager at the hotel where Janelle had stayed was a slight man in his fifties.  Wearing old slacks, wire rimmed glasses and a pink shirt with the collar pulled out over his sweater, he looked more like a music teacher from a private boys school than a hotelier.  Lara glanced at the cuffs of his tweed jacket, expecting to see chalk marks as he examined the picture of Janelle she had handed him.  His name was Henri and he was co-operating and spoke English and Lara was grateful for both.

“Yes, very nice girl. Beautiful! She was here just a few days, no trouble.  I don’t like trouble.  Bad for business.” 

Henri was still trying to figure out why an American cop would be interested in one of his guests.  Had she killed someone?  Part of a cult, maybe.  Or perhaps a rich man’s daughter who had come to Paris for some romance and instead had been swept away by the city.  Henri had seen many like that over the years.  Sad and lonely creatures who were ferocious in their pursuit of self-destruction, eventually succumbing to the empty and hollow hunger that no amount of self-indulgence could satisfy.  More often than not, they were left alone, looking at the broken pieces they had made of themselves.  They were breathtaking emotional hurricanes that threatened to destroy all in their path, especially themselves.  Henri had not only seen these girls in his hotel over the years, but he had had his heart broken by one as a young man.  Rare was the day that went by when he did not think of her, at least for a moment, wondering what became of her. She would often haunt his dreams and tease at his heart even after all this time. Perhaps, he thought to himself, this was why he was eager to help the Detective find Janelle.

“What would you like to know, Detective?”

“She’s my sister.  She didn’t make it home.  When she left here, do you remember if she was alone or was somebody with her?  A man, maybe.”

“I think she said she was going to buy souvenirs.”

“What time did she check out?”

“Three.  I did not charge her extra.  She was very nice.  Not like the others.  The others are trouble.”

“Did she say where she was going to get the souvenirs?”

“Ah, the Pompidou I think.  It’s not far, just a few meters across the street.”

“And when she was here, did you see anybody with her?  At all.”

“There were backpackers from the Hostel.  The hostel is over there.  I saw her with them.”

Henri pointed through the windows behind Lara and she looked out to the Youth Hostel across the street.  She hoped the backpackers hadn’t gone back home yet.

She asked him if Janelle’s room was still available and left him a deposit to hold it and her bags, then crossed the busy street to the Hostel.  Inside, she could smell cigarette smoke and weed.  The Desk Clerk, a portly woman in her thirties who had missed the road to beauty, barely glanced at her and returned to her magazine.  Lara walked in to the recreation area, a games room with pool tables, and a juke box, a small bar at the back and sofas and tables around the room. Reggae music played from a stereo somebody had plugged in to the wall.  Lara looked around at the men and women dotted about the place.  She caught a blur of several languages- English, French, German.  They were younger than her by at least a decade, fresh faced kids who thought they were important because they were traveling without their parents, some of them for the first time.  Others had acquired the look of a seasoned traveler, they were more relaxed, less excited.  They were the ones who looked at her like she’d come to break up the party.  The kids by the pool table were American.  Two of them.  A tall skinny boy with red hair and glasses and a short stocky girl with a purple streak in her hair.  Lara walked over to them. 

“Hey, guys, speak English?” Lara asked, a smile on her face that she hoped was disarming.  She never got completely comfortable with the masks she had to wear to get information from people.  If only distrust didn’t exist and could be replaced with straight talk and the ability to communicate, her life, her job and the world would be simpler to navigate she thought.

“Shit, yeah, we’re from Illinois.  Where you in from?” said the boy.  The young woman gave Lara a dismissive once over, then turned her back.  Lara decided the boy was eager to talk and she had a feeling she knew how to work him. 

“I just got in from LA.  I’m looking for my sister.  Janelle.  She was staying at the hotel across the street.  Have you seen her, she said she was gonna be here?”

The boy’s face flushed and went ruddy.  He smiled but it was a bittersweet one, teasing the edges of his mouth and Lara knew she had struck some kind of pay dirt.  He had met her.  She listened close.

“Janelle, yeah.  I hung out with her.  I’m Jared.”

Lara stepped forward and shook his hand.  He had the look of a prep school kid, from money, slumming it in the hostels either to meet girls or to learn how real people behaved.  Whatever his motives, he seemed a genuine kid and she could see why Janelle would like him.  Purple Streak on the other hand, was making a point of hitting the pool balls as loudly as she could to show her distaste in the background.  Lara tuned her out.

“You know where she is?”  Lara asked him.

“No.  She left yesterday.  Did she know you were coming? Maybe you guys just missed each other.  Bad timing and shit.”

“You know how she got to the airport?”