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

by Chris O'Neill

  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.”

  “And what about unofficially? You must have intelligence operatives based here. Isn’t there somebody you can talk to, someone who can help. I’d owe you a favor and I have a lot of pull back home . That might come in handy for you some point down the line.”

  “That’s very generous of you, Detective, but I really am kind of powerless at this point. Even with the local Police involved there’s nothing we can do from our end in assisting them other than liaising on your behalf. I’d be happy to do that as a special favor considering your law enforcement credentials. But the ‘intelligence people’ you spoke about, I don’t know anything about that.”

  He was beginning to tune out of the conversation, his mind drifting to which restaurant he should take Cecille to before taking her back to his flat for the night.

  “You’re looking for a female backpacker. An American tourist who isn’t staying in the usual hotels. She’s traveling with a crowd of people who move from place to place with no way of tracking them. She could be working in a bar getting paid under the table here or Berlin or London or Madrid. All they have to do is get on a train and jump off wherever they feel like. If someone wants to get lost out here it’s pretty easy to do. This isn’t America. There are millions of people across Europe who are totally off the grid.”

  He hadn’t meant it to sound so dismissive or final, but those were the cold hard facts and she had to realize that. From the look on her face, he knew he had said too much. The woman leaned forward, determined. Her eyes seemed to bore directly in to his soul and he found himself shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

  “Mr Shaye, I know you have a lot of red tape and rules but if you could think about this situation, this one girl, outside of the box for a second. She’s a young, pretty girl out there on her own and a man has her. Girls like her- backpackers- traveling alone are perfect victims. I agree with everything you just said and that’s why I think there’ve been others.”

  “Now you’re saying there’s a serial killer in Paris you just happened to have stumbled upon because your sister didn’t come home time? That’s a pretty big jump, don’t you think? ”

  “He’s got a twenty four hour head start on us. We’re way behind him already, Mr Shaye. I’m just hoping it’s not too late.”

  “I guess I’m just having trouble with this leap. How did we go from your sister to a man kidnapping multiple backpackers? I’m not in law enforcement so forgive me if I sound naïve.”

  “I give lectures on this kind of predatory behavior. When I spoke to him he seemed too controlled for a first timer. He didn’t sound like someone who had just acted on impulse. Answering her phone and talking to me took a lot of guts and confidence- chutzpah. That suggests he’s comfortable doing what he does, that means he’s not a first timer.”

  “I don’t follow,” he muttered, genuinely confused.

  “Balls, Mr Shaye. You’re familiar with those I assume.”

  It had already become evident to her that Derek Shaye was something of a moron, but he was a moron with potential juice at the embassy so she pushed on.

  “For someone who wants to prey on young women out here, backpackers are perfect targets. He could be long gone before anyone knew his victim was missing.”

  Derek Shaye tried to process all of this. It was new to him and, honestly, felt like something he had seen on TV. He looked at the Detective and wondered if she was even sane. Calling that Captain at the LAPD was sounding like a prudent thing to do right now to check her credentials. Her sister was probably holed up in a hotel somewhere with some tanned muscle head she had met in a bar.

  He took a moment to consider what all of this meant. If she was right, that would mean more paperwork, forms to be filled in and a lot of sweat and effort he wasn’t interested in putting in. If she was wrong and was simply just over reacting based on her experience as a Police Officer, then that, too, could mean paperwork. He had to distance himself from her and wash his hands of the incident as quickly and finally as possible. He decided the best way to do it was in the most diplomatic way possible, which was to steer her towards someone else. In this case, the Paris Police. He reached for his pen a
nd wrote on a piece of paper on his desk.

  “Inspector Jean Brouchard is a very experienced officer with the Paris Police. He’s a friend of mine and if you tell him I sent you he will help you immediately.” Derek Shaye finished writing the address of Brouchard’s station and the phone number and slid it to the Detective.

  “If you’d like to give me a number where I can reach you…”

  Lara shook her head. She’d recognized the look in his eyes as soon as she walked in- he was another predator, just a different kind to the one she was hunting and nowhere near as practiced, despite what he might think of his skills.

  “I’ll call you if I can find something for you to do.” Lara said and walked out the door.

  For the first time in his career, Derek Shaye couldn’t find anything to say. She had left him speechless and emasculated. He checked the clock and saw he would be able to meet with Cecille after all. Lara McBride was no longer his problem.

  He had no idea how wrong he was.

  Chapter Ten

  Lara hailed a cab outside the Embassy and sat in the back seat as the Taxi stormed through the rain, passing the Arc de Triumph and on to the Champs d’Elysses. She had the piece of paper in her hand with Inspector Brouchard’s contact details and she pulled out her cellphone to call. She checked her watch. It was pushing six o’clock now and she had wasted precious time waiting at the embassy. Brouchard was probably not even on duty but she would try anyway. She got voicemail- in French- but she thought she heard the name “Brouchard” in the greeting somewhere. She hung up, not even sure what to say. She had the address for his office and planned to head over there and see if she could find him in person.

  She suddenly felt her chest tighten and her breathing became short. She had the driver stop, paid him and got out of the cab halfway down the boulevard. She needed air, even if it was raining so viciously. She took cover from the downpour in a bus shelter while she looked around for a pharmacy. Traffic swarmed on the busy street and people ran down the sidewalk to get out of the rain. The city was alive and throbbing, the lights from the stores glowing in the early evening gloom. She felt dizzy and tried to tune everything out so she could calm down and operate back at maximum efficiency. Otherwise, she would be useless.

  She had dreaded anything happening to close family or a friend. She was afraid of it because she didn’t know if she would be able to perform as well when someone she was close to and cared about was the victim. She was perfectly confident in her abilities as a Detective, she knew what she was doing and she had had the best training and the experience of doing it in one of the most dangerous cities in America. But, when it was personal, she feared she would doubt her abilities, second guess herself and crumble under the pressure. She didn’t want that. She couldn’t let that happen. She knew this tease of a panic attack was just her subconscious fear of failure kicking in.

  “Well, fuck that…” she said to herself, opening her eyes and taking a deep breath, sucking in the taste of the city and opening herself up to it, surrendering every sense she had to the hunting grounds around her.

  “I’m gonna find you. You don’t know I’m here. Maybe I say should hello.” Sometimes talking out loud to herself gave her the best ideas and the simplest plans. Now she had one. She had to find a way to make contact with the man who had her sister.

  Chapter Eleven

  Guillotine looked at the missing posters stapled to the tree by the river, tour boats slowly moving over the river behind him like fat beasts migrating south. It was Janelle. Someone had come looking for her. He looked down at the contact details beneath Janelle’s picture. It implored whoever may have seen her to call “Lara”. The woman who had called Janelle’s phone repeatedly. The woman he had chosen to talk to, something he had never done before. This Lara had wasted no time creating the missing posters and getting them out all over the major tourist spots. Guillotine knew he should feel uneasy. He was being hunted. But he felt a thrill. It wasn’t the first time someone had come looking for one of his Angels and put up flyers appealing for help but he had never made contact with them before. They had all gone home empty handed. There had been something pathetic and desperate about their attempts. They had waited weeks, sometimes months, for their daughters and sisters before they had come out here looking. Lara’s dedication and tenacity piqued his interest. She was driven and wasted no time. She was not playing by the rules and that excited him. Clearly, she was not working with the Police, either- and that encouraged him further.

  Ironically, she had nailed one of her missing posters over one of those for his gallery show next week, “Les Arts d’Guillotine”. Had she not put her flyer on his poster, defacing it, making him come over to remove it, he may have missed it entirely. Fate worked in mysterious ways, he mused. People looked at him as he stood holding the poster in his hands, chuckling to himself.

  He checked his watch and saw he was already five minutes late for his meeting with Claude, the gallery owner and manager of new artists who had taken him under his wing to make him the toast of the Paris art scene. A pretentious, peacocking fop, Claude was useful only to Guillotine in that he could bring his work to the world’s attention. In that respect, Claude was a necessary evil. He represented the money and business side of art and Guillotine detested that. Art and commerce were two different species and their offspring could only be a bastard mutation. However, Guillotine knew he needed Claude to bring more attention to him. For the bigger piece. He started walking, headed for the café where they were to meet.

  Bald little Claude sat at his regular table wearing his most expensive suit with a purple handkerchief peeking out of his breast pocket. For Claude, it was a unique signature that he confidently felt gave him some artistic kudos and personal expression. Guillotine hated the purple handkerchief. It offended him every time he saw him wearing it. Sometimes he had to struggle with the urge to use the cheese wire he kept in his pocket to sheer off Claude’s face, wrap it in that purple handkerchief and toss it to some wild street dogs as a treat on his way home. Claude sat now, offensively slurping at a cappuccino and smiling at the waiter in as flirtatious a manner as he could muster. He was an abomination, a parasite leeching off true artists like himself, soaking up the excess adulation like a greedy sloth.

  The first time he had met Guillotine, Claude had been on his way to an appointment when he had passed the mobile trailer Guillotine had parked on the street and decorated with his sketches. He was doing portraits for tourists and had been sat chatting with a pretty young British girl. Claude had stopped to admire his work. These were not just mere portraits done for tourists for quick cash. They were vivid and alive, as though Guillotine had captured their souls with paper and charcoal. He had asked if Guillotine did other work. Guillotine had looked right at him and Claude had gasped seeing his face in the light. The scars were like thick lips crisscrossing his face in elaborate tribal patterns, threatening to open any second and devour him. He felt a sudden rush of sexual attraction and wanted to put his lips on every scar and force his tongue inside. Claude was familiar with “scarification” but he had never seen it so beautifully rendered as it was on Guillotine’s face. Claude had watched Guillotine at his exhibitions, had seen how he wielded the scars as weapons, revealing them to those he felt were beneath him or wanted to shut up and go away. Claude found the man arousing- his confidence and power over people was intoxicating.

  Guillotine was an odd fellow, Claude had always thought, but then gifted artists always were. He had shown him other works, masterpieces depicting the levels of hell as described in Dante’s Inferno. Claude thought there was something deliciously anti-Catholic about Guillotine’s work, obsessed as it was with sin and punishment without redemption, the “heavenly” elements always presented as something of an exaggerated joke. Guillotine’s work on pain and suffering was rendered on oil canvasses mounted on thick wooden frames giving them a dense, tactile existence, whereas the sketches were done on paper, as ethereal as the live
s they captured. Intrigued by the contradiction of hardcore suffering depicted on canvass and angelic beauty on paper, he had asked Guillotine why he chose the two mediums. Guillotine had simply explained that beauty fades yet pain was eternal. With sentiments like that, Claude couldn’t wait to find a suitable place to exhibit his work and get him in front of the press. What sound bites and quotes he could give to promote his work. Now, if only he could find out how close he was to finishing this masterpiece he kept teasing him about.

  When Guillotine walked in to the café and sat opposite him, Claude felt the usual rush of excitement.

  “Did you finish? Is it ready?” he blurted.

  Guillotine rarely looked at him, seemed fascinated now by the rain spattering against the windows.

  “Soon,” Guillotine replied, dismissive. Something was on his mind. Claude decided to change subjects.

  “I have good news. Paris Match will be covering the event. Le Monde is confirmed and I have someone coming from the British Sunday Times. The Americans are not biting, but they will when we move the exhibit to New York after Christmas.”