Jean-Luc clears his throat. “That is correct.” He hands me a business card from his pants pocket. A phone number and his name are printed on one side. “If you need anything, you know where I live.”

I slip the card in my bag and thank him, already turning toward the main entry. Although the last thing I want to do is leave the whiteboard unattended, to part ways with this—possible—proof that my sister is alive, I step outside. Its invisible tether trails behind me, as I hail a cab and wonder whether Inspector Valentin knows more than his muffled calls suggested.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Montmartre bustles in the afternoon with a deep humidity that moistens every back. Street vendors hawk items around me as I climb into the cab in a daze. The driver takes me down a hill, through what appears to be the tourist section—the Champs-Élysées, he announces—awash in dazzling verandas and brightly colored flags swaying overhead in the breeze.

We pass over the Seine River from the Right Bank to the Left. Couples sitting outside cafés sip wine and tiny coffees while observing the crowds. At a stoplight, a man juggles a soccer ball from knee to knee on the base of a weatherworn statue, drawing curious onlookers and a few alert policemen.

This city is Angela’s home, her permanent address for the last three years. Instead of finishing up at UC San Diego, as I had done, mere footsteps from where we grew up in La Jolla, Angela stayed in Paris after spending a semester abroad. I got her reasons why. She discovered ancient urban planning studies during her sophomore year of college, and the Sorbonne is world renowned for its program in that field. While I was happy for her, I didn’t understand why she would choose to be so far away from our family. From me. Why she would move to the land of Da Vinci Code mysteries, baguettes—when she’s been gluten-free since we were twenty—and Serge Gainsbourg, a cultural hero of fetishists and machismo. And especially why she stayed after our parents’ deaths.

Outside the police station, pollution mingles with the thick summer air to insulate the street like a blanket. I head for the metal doors. Menacing gargoyles clutch the corners of a stone portico, glaring as I pass beneath. Inside, I pass through the door in the one-way glass to where two metal detectors and a guard armed with an AK-47 flank a second set of doors. I try not to stare as I continue inside—my first sighting of the French military. Individuals wait along the walls on cushioned benches, one man sleeping, mouth agape. Framed black-and-white photographs decorate the walls, and a sprawling mural of a Napoleonic battlefield hangs above the reception desk, like a warning that history often repeats itself.