Jean-Luc shifts his weight. He looks up to the fourth floor, then back to me. “My pleasure, miss. I actually live above your sister’s apartment, so it wasn’t any trouble.”

Both eyebrows shoot into my hairline. “You live here? That’s . . . convenient.” My tone is playful, but my stomach immediately pinches. Angela’s note flashes to mind before I brush it away. I can’t start off by rejecting government officials; they’re the handful of connections I have abroad.

“Can I see a badge?”

He fishes a black leather square with a clip from his back pocket. “Of course.”

When he flips it forward, a generic office mug shot stares back at me. Not a hint of a smile against the white background—at once bureaucratic and legitimate looking. I catch his name across the top and a few numbers before I feel sheepish and return it. “That’s fine, thank you. I should get going. I’m actually meeting the detective on my sister’s case.”

He waves me forward with a tight smile. He must have sat in two hours of traffic to the airport and back. “Of course. I’ll walk you down.”

We descend in silence, excepting each creak of the warped steps. At the bottom, beside the open door marked CONCIERGE, a woman digs in a large army-style backpack with a fold-over top. An empty reusable grocery bag dangles from a thin arm. Coke-bottle glasses and gray-streaked black hair would give her the appearance of a regular grandmother, were it not for the items she withdraws from her backpack: a retractable measuring tape, a boxing glove, and a book with Cyrillic script on the cover.

Unable to find whatever she’s looking for, she throws up her hands, swears in Chinese, then kicks the door back open and disappears inside.

If Angela really is gone, what will happen to her apartment? Has she paid rent? Does she owe any?

“That’s Madame Chang.” Jean-Luc lifts his chin, already acting the tour guide. “And the last you’ll probably see of her during the day. She’s a night owl.”

I nod. “So you know . . . knew . . . Angela, too? Since you live here.” The past tense feels garbled in my mouth, uncomfortable. Less than an hour earlier, I felt an endless void of panic and loss. Now there’s only a bizarre hollow emotion, sucked dry and stuffed with queasy uncertainty.

“I moved in recently, but I saw her once or twice, yes. It’s why the brass at work thought I would be the most available of all the repatriation employees. I’m actually one of the foreign interns.”

“Ah. So you do all the bitch work.” I can’t help admiring—testing—his level of English.