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

by Chris O'Neill

  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 hi
m.

  “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?”

  “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 ar
ound 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.