The Sketcher's Mark (Lara McBride Thrillers Book 1) (6 page)

“The Metro, probably.  It goes all the way up there.  And it’s cheap.”

“So are you, Jared,”  Purple Streak muttered and slammed the white ball with her cue.  Jared sucked his teeth and leaned in close to Lara. 

“She’s kinda pissed cos Janelle got more attention than she did, if you know what I mean.  Your sister’s just, like, amazingly cool and shit.”

Purple Streak tossed the cue on the pool table and stormed away to the bar for a beer.

“You guys smoked weed together?” Lara asked.

“Oh, sure, we blazed a few times.  There’s weed out here you wouldn’t believe.”

“Right on.  Did you give it to her?”

“Hey,” Jared took a step back and she saw the kids by the window who had been smoking the joint she smelled when she walked in were getting up to leave, casting nervous glances her way.  Jared was becoming agitated.  She needed to calm him down or play hardball and intimidate him.  She saw no reason to make him feel nervous and risk clamming up, so she decided to play friendly instead.

“I’m just curious; I’ve never known her to smoke weed.  But she smoked with you so she must have really liked you. I guess that was her way of trying to impress you, right?  Or maybe you were trying to impress her.  Like you said, she’s amazingly cool.  And shit.”

He smiled at this and his voice dropped low, muttering more to himself as his eyes drifted to the floor and his mind pulled him back to yesterday.  “Yeah, I really liked her…”

Now that she knew he had a soft spot for Janelle, she knew she could play on his feelings.  It was a manipulative technique but effective and all she really had time for.

“Janelle went missing yesterday.  She didn’t make her flight.  Somebody- a man- might be holding her against her will.  I need to know if she was around anyone suspicious.  Drug dealers would count as suspicious, Jared. So, where’d you get the weed?”

“Jesus.  She went missing?  Shit.  I don’t… I’m sorry.” Jared paused, trying to process what he had just heard. 

“Did she hang out with anyone else?” Lara asked.

“No, just us.  She left and we didn’t see her after that.  I had the weed.  She didn’t meet any dealers that I know of.  Besides, I brought the stash over from Amsterdam.”

“Make sure you smoke all your weed before you go through customs- they tend to get a little upset if they find drugs in your carry on,” she said and walked out, leaving Jared standing in the rec room alone with only the Reggae music and his memories and the girl with the purple hair glaring at him over her shoulder..

On the street, Lara could smell fresh baked bread coming from one of the many Pattiseries and realized she hadn’t eaten since she left Los Angeles.  She walked in to the nearest bakery, bought a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches and ate them both as she made her way over the streets to the Pompidou.  A wind had picked up and was howling off the stone buildings, making the pedestrians pull their jackets tighter and move that bit faster to their destinations.  She crossed the busy boulevard traffic and walked with a large crowd of locals and tourists into the vast Pompidou square.

The Musee de Pompidou sat like an over sized box holding court to its admirers. It wore its guts on the outside, pipes running all over the exterior. An odd but captivating building, the exterior facing the square had scaffolding greeting its visitors.  It was permanent, perhaps to represent the works in progress of the modern art it displayed inside.  Always changing, reimagining itself, never complete, its face never defined, the building was intriguing to Lara and she looked over the crowd of people it had drawn to come marvel at its design and the treasures inside.  The glass enclosed staircase and escalators that snaked up the side of the building looked like an air tube keeping an emergency room patient alive.  Lara stood facing the Museum itself, restaurants and art shops bustling behind her. A stone slope lead down to the wide open square beneath the museum where young people gathered in groups to eat, drink, smoke, play music, paint.  They were backpackers, young kids, and travelers like Janelle who either sat in groups or on their own, all over the square.  Sketch artists sat on the edges, looking down on the people below as they drew their customers’ faces, indulging the vanities of tourists and immortalizing the moment.   Lara paid them as little attention as everyone else, they were part of the scenery, just as much as the streetlights and storefronts.

Janelle had caught the eye of someone out here with his own dark designs.  Someone who had been waiting for his moment of opportunity to get to her. That was all they ever needed. This man- this collector of Angels- had been looking in to the square like a gargoyle perched on the edge of a church. He had seen Janelle hurrying, looking for souvenirs.  He knew she was rattled, not thinking straight- easy prey.  Whether it was an impulsive thing, she had just caught his eye, he went after her and got her or whether he had been stalking her for days was the grey area now.  But she was sure he had seen Janelle here, out in the open.  This was a hunting ground for him.  She felt that as sure as she could feel the concrete under her feet.  It felt right.  And the targets, the potential victims were perfect because so many of them were transient, from different countries, often not speaking the language or knowing the terrain.  Just like her.

A couple of backpackers, pretty young girls in their early twenties, stood up in the square below and began to drift out of the area.  Lara, assuming the eyes of the man who had locked on to her sister, followed them discreetly from the upper area.  The girls walked on, unaware they were being watched.  It was so easy.  Lara looked up to the corners of the buildings that flanked the square, saw the security cameras.  The one pointed directly down here was broken, hanging loosely down from a single cable, as though its neck was broken.  There was such heavy foot traffic here, though, it would be impossible to find a single suspect on the footage, even if it existed.  She looked back to the two pretty girls and followed them out of the square.  At the traffic light, she stood just a few feet away from them, still invisible to them.  The crowd of people around Lara made it easy to hide in plain sight, as it would have been for him.  Especially him, because he had done this before, she was sure.  The crosswalk light turned green and the crowd surged forward.  Lara stayed where she was, watching the two girls cross the street and sink down the steps in to the Metro Station.

She closed her eyes and thought of the silence in the dream she’d had on the plane, the dark that had come for her and the feeling of helplessness.  She was not helpless here.  She was determined and Janelle needed her.  She took a breath and could see the scene around her.  In her mind, she saw that she was standing in this man’s wake.  He had left a trail, an essence, an imprint in time that only she could see and feel.  His trail had not led here.  He had not followed her to the Metro.  He had not taken her on the train.  There were cameras on the corners, outside the other stores and cafes.  Too many eyes, too many witnesses.  The camera back there in the square was an itch in her skull that needed attending.  She turned back around, the walkway leading out of the square was empty, blurred.  The black ribbons fluttered in the wind.  She followed them, walking across the concrete towards the fountain off to the side of the museum.  She saw the painting on the brick wall, the man in the drawing telling people to “shh”.  He knew a secret.  He had seen what happened.  But he was staying silent.  There were no cameras here, either.  The lack of surveillance was like a breadcrumb trail. 

The ribbons fluttered down the residential street, past the church and the apartments and simply hung there.  She looked at the parked cars.  Had he parked here?  How had he got her out of the square and back here?  The Metro station was in the opposite direction so she wouldn’t have been headed this way unless she had a reason.  That reason had to be him.  She talked with him.  He’d earned her trust somehow.  How the hell did he do that?

In her mind, she reached out and grabbed one of the ribbons, felt it coil around her wrist like a writhing parasite, sliding warm and wet on her forearm, bonding with her skin so she would feel its presence until this was over and she brought Janelle home.  She committed now in the moment to finding her sister, to finding this man.  She committed to the hunt.

She opened her eyes and knew she had taken her first step on the long dark path that led to them both.

Chapter Nine

Derek Shaye had been working at the US Embassy in Paris for two years.  The pay was miserable but he enjoyed the city’s nightlife and he spent most of his miserable wages taking local bad girls to good dinners.  He had no savings, which bothered him greatly because money was important to Derek Shaye.  If he lost his job-, which he would if the Ambassador ever discovered the affair he was having with his wife- he would be left with nothing.  That concerned him on a daily basis and made him want to keep a low profile at the Embassy.  He would not go above and beyond because, despite his faults, Derek Shaye was well suited to the world of being a Diplomat.  He knew that above all else, the best thing any Diplomat could ever do was as little as possible and, hopefully, nothing at all, but do it with a smile until somebody promoted you and you had to do absolutely nothing at all.  His last appointment of the day was a Detective from Los Angeles and he planned on doing very little, but do it with a smile.

When Lara McBride walked through the door, Derek Shaye thought he might have to cancel his six o’clock rendezvous with Cecille, the waitress he had been trying to get a date with for three weeks.  The Detective from Los Angeles was tall and beautiful. Her body was perfectly proportioned, athletic in the way he liked.  There was an immediacy and intensity about her that he found primal and alluring.  He could safely say within seconds of speaking to her and looking in those driven blue eyes that she was unlike any woman he had ever met and he was already trying to figure out how he might get her out for some wine and then back to his bed. Maybe he could push Cecille to tomorrow and take this Detective for a spin, show her the town.  Paris was useful for sweeping impressionable women off their feet and Derek Shaye knew all the right places to make an impression.

“My name is Lara McBride, I’m a Detective with the LAPD Homicide Division.  You can check with my Captain stateside to verify my credentials.  My sister’s name is Janelle.  She was kidnapped here less than twenty four hours ago.  I need to know what you can do to help me find her.”

Lara produced a photo of Janelle, another beautiful young thing that Derek Shaye would have also loved to meet.  But he could tell Lara was all business, so he put forward his most convincing look of concern.  Derek Shaye was well practiced with this look.

“That’s terrible, Detective.  I’m truly sorry for you predicament.  Have you spoken with the Police?”  This was standard procedure.  The embassy could do nothing before a report was filed with the Police.  Beyond that, there was little they could do either.

“I just went to the hotel where she was staying, looking for a lead.  I came up short and I figured I better come to you officially- before things get out of hand.”

“What do you mean by ‘out of hand’, Detective?  Car chases and gun fights?  This isn’t LA.”

“I mean before I start tearing Paris apart looking for her by myself, it would be better to have help.”

“What did the Police say when you talked to them?”

“I haven’t talked to them yet.  I thought as an American citizen-”

“-well, you really should speak to the Police,” Derek Shaye interrupted her.  He had heard this argument before and he knew the response and delivered it automatically. “They’ll log a report, put her picture through their channels and do everything they can to assist you.  But they’re really your first point of contact, not us.”

“Can you help me with that?  Get things moving a little faster?”

“We can advise you on where to go, addresses of local Police stations.  Where are you staying, Detective?  Can I call you ‘Lara’?”

She ignored him, sensing he was trying to get too friendly- with an all too obvious ulterior motive. She imagined he was a terrible poker player, giving everything away within seconds.

“So, what you’re saying is you can’t really do anything for me at all.  Nothing that I couldn’t have been doing already instead of wasting my time waiting for two hours outside to come in and talk to you.”

Derek Shaye heard himself sigh audibly- and regretted it immediately.  His eyes flicked to the clock and he thought if he could get this woman out of here in the next five minutes he could still meet with Cecille and the day wouldn’t be a total loss.

“I think the best thing you can do- the only thing you can do at this point- is file a missing persons report with the Police.  She has to be declared missing by the local authorities before a search can begin.”

“Come on, Mr Shaye.  We both know the local Police aren’t going to make this a priority. She’s a tourist.  A backpacker.  If I go in there with you guys whispering in their ear they might look a little harder.  See what I’m saying?  I’m just asking you to make a call and help me out here.”

“It’s procedure.  Protocol.  We cannot officially involve ourselves in local matters.”