Jeanne Bonheur's Story

"Sophia!"

Vanessa was near hysterical by this point.

"She was just here," she said as Jeanna came running back out of the house. "Where would she have gone?"

"Sophia!"

She raked her fingers through her soaked hair as the rain ran in rivulets down her face. She couldn't see anything out here and she turned about in place, not at all paying attention that she was in the middle of the street.

As Bowen appeared on the scene as well she was feeling nauseated.

"Sophia's missing," she shouted to him, before trying to call for Sophia again.

"Sophia!"

Long lines drew at the sides of Jeanne's mouth as she frowned. She knew the terror of missing one's child. Especially in Lutetia.

"What does your daughter look like?" she asked Vanessa. "I'm going to send out my officers on a search. We're going to try and find her."

She glanced at the men who rolled up, but her concentration was on the woman and getting the task done.

Bowen looked at Léon, then ran back to him. He spoke to him briefly, describing Sophia. Léon stepped back into the car and took off to make a pass around the block. Bowen jogged back to stand near Vanessa and frantically looked around and joined in calling her a few times. Unlike her he remained somewhat calm. His calm gave way to anger. "We will find her. We will find her...", he said. He tried to coax Vanessa out of the street.

"Ms. Bonheur?!", he would question her. He knew her. They traveled in the same circles and spoke to the same people. He knew what she was well known for but he knew that it was hopeless. The fresh smell of the rain had destroyed everything. The trail was gone before either of them could get so much as a whiff. His jaw clenched and his anger boiled over, anger at his own powerlessness, anger at the police for allowing this to happen.

"I.. uh..." Vanessa turned around.

She needed to find Sophia, but she couldn't get her thoughts together beyond that. She didn't know which direction to go, where to start.

She put a hand to her mouth trying to think.

"There's a picture of her, on the shelf in the living room," Vanessa managed.

Jeanne nodded to Vanessa. "I'll be right back," she said to them. She glanced at the man who'd called her for a moment. "I'll talk to you when I come back out."

Her reputation spread a little far, Jeanne realized as she hurried inside to look for the photo. Once she did, she passed it around the other officers inside, telling them to spread out and keep their radios close. "We've made a big mistake today. We're not letting her get away for long!"

"I need to call someone..."

She pressed her knuckles to her lips as she tried to get her thoughts together. Baron was still in prison, The Den was closed and no one would be there.

"What if her father took her?" she asked suddenly.

She was grasping at straws, but she was panicking.

He was drenched to the bone and so was she but he did not care. "Would he do that?" For all Bowen knew Sophia's father was capable of anything but he didn't understand why he would do it. He didn't know the guy well enough to profile him.

Léon pulled back up, rolled down the window and shook his head. "I didn't see her. The police should cordon off the area and do a house by house." Bowen would look back to Vanessa. "Please.", he would call to her and then step around the car and out into the street. "Come out of the road. I have a phone. Make your call." Again he would try and coax her out of the street.

"I don't know... maybe?" she said as Bowen managed to get her to step out of the street. "I don't know who else might have taken her."

She looked at the phone in hand but she couldn't figure out who to call with Baron still in jail. She finally hugged her arms to herself as she tried to get her head around the situation.

"I shouldn't have left her there, I should have been watching her. I just... she was right there. Maybe if I shift I can pick up a trail," she said.

"No. It won't help. The scent is gone. The rain washed it away.", he shook his head and took her hand, leading her back over to where Léon waited in the car. "Do a few more passes. Question anyone you see." Léon nodded and pulled away again.

He would lead Vanessa back in the direction of the house. He hopped against all hope that this was a case of Sophia just wandering off. Perhaps she was stuck somewhere waiting for the rain to stop. He worried though. He worried like Vanessa that someone had taken her, taken her from right under the police's nose.

All of this sat at the back of his mind as he walked and lead Vanessa back in the direction of the house. His phone was gripped in his hand and he hesitated to make a call of his own.

Jeanne walked quickly out of the house and approached the group, voices blaring on her radio that she didn't need to answer. She'd given out the orders already. Cops streamed out of the house into the streets, some got into their cars, began to drive out to find the girl. "We'll find her," she said to Vanessa. She didn't know how long it would take, but they would find her.

She gave her attention to Bowen. "Do I know you?" she asked him. "This has to be brief. I'm going to search, too."

Bowen saying her name earlier was not in wonder that he knew her or that he questioned her name. He had said her name in disbelief that she could have allowed this to happen during a warrant search. She had not assigned an officer to maintain custody of the people found in the residence at the time the warrant was served. By her command and her issued orders to the officers at the scene she was the detective calling the shots. She was in charge and she was responsible for the missing child.

"Yeah you know me. I am Bowen Eli Davion. Find Sophia Ms. Bonheur. Find her quick.", he said before turning away. He pressed a single button on his phone and then raised it to his ear. "Good morning Mrs. Wakefield..." Heat sent mist off the top of Bowen's head, as water droplets cascaded through his hair and down his brow.

Jeanne squinted at Bowen briefly before turning her attention to Vanessa. That's all he'd wanted. So be it.

"Alright, I'm going to need to ask you a lot of questions, miss."

It was going to be a long night, but it didn't matter to Jeanne. No child was snatched from under her nose and kept that way.

Richard folded his arms, eyes darting up to Leon with a raised brow. So it wasn't Baron who'd done it. He'd just helped hide the weapon. He began to wonder if they'd failed getting a second body into the dumpster at the Den. But there wasn't a blood trail, no sign that the body there had been moved. So was it just a coincidence?

Four attacks in a week. That number was surprisingly concerning for a city built atop corpses.

"Well?" grumbled Richard. "What do you have to say to that, Baron?"

"Say to that? I say you should bend your partner over the table and fuck him in the ass. He looks like a pansy little bitch who would like that," Baron told Richard.

Only the tenseness of the muscles in his jaw and shoulders betrayed his physical discomfort, but even with the table edge being ground into his ribs, and the zipties cutting painfully into his wrists, Baron was choosing to remain uncooperative; after all, he already had what he was after.

Like the opportunist she was, Jeanne opened the door with a creak, expression grim below her auburn bangs. "The real question is what do you two have to say for yourselves?" she spat, closing the door behind her. "Did you know the ambulance crashed? The woman is missing. I cannot find her."

She shifted her gaze to Baron and circled around behind him, a crease in her brow. "Selene bless, are your fingers purple?"

Jeanne looked up at Richard and Leon with a scowl. "What are you guys doing? We're not trying to turn him into an amputee! You know what? Leon, get down to Ninette in the lab. She's looking at the young man's body from this afternoon. Richard, you... just leave. Both of you, just leave. I'll take care of Baron. I want you two out."

As the door opened, Baron shifted his eyes over to Jeanne, the woman who was the cause of all this.

"Detective," Baron greeted the woman. "We where all just having a friendly chat... no harm done..." he remarked.

She turned to Baron, "Oh, yes. Sounds like you and the boys are gossiping it up an' getting ready for a tea party," the detective retorted with a tight smile.

Richard gave a snort at Jeanne, accompanied by a glare that she returned. "Bonheur, you don't expect..."

"Leave," she demanded.

There was a rumbling sigh from Richard, who finally up and departed with Leon.

After watching them go, Jeanne moved around behind Baron, flipping out a small knife.

"So are you charging me with something, or is this some elaborate foreplay?" Baron asked. His eyes followed her as she moved behind him.

Jeanne laughed through her nose as she knelt behind him. "You're getting a charge for reckless endangerment and false imprisonment. Though, to be quite honest, those charges shouldn't include the price of your fingers..." She moved to cleanly cut the head off of the cable ties, being careful not to cut into his skin.

He moved his hands around in front of him and rubbed at his wrists to try and get the circulation going again.

"Don't suppose you have a cigarette?" he asked.

"We don't smoke in here, Baron," she responded, raising a brow at him. "But nice try."

She walked over to the other side of the table, glaring at the knife. "And what's this? Did Leon find this on you?" she asked, taking it up in two fingers. She opened the bag, glancing at the item. "It's not yours, is it?"

"If by mine you mean that little shit, Leon, pulling it out of his ass, then sure," Baron replied.

His eyes found hers, staring her down with the same intensity he had in the bar.

"If you ask me, you're investigating the wrong person here," he added.

Jeanne looked him straight in the eye without a speck of fear. She zipped up the plastic bag and held it at her side. "For the knife, yes," she agreed. "You won't be charged for this. However, there's only so much I can do with all the activity in Vargeras lately. Would anyone in your pack have used this in a murder? You've got a better track record than most, but this isn't far fetched."

"If I asked you over to my place for a drink when I get out of here, would you be interested?" he asked.

He entirely ignored her inquiry, and it was difficult to say if the man was remotely serious, or just trying to get a rise out of her.

Jeanne couldn't help but give him a wry grin. "You know, Baron. It'd help me help you if you were a bit more cooperative."

"Maybe I like it in here," he answered. He folded his hands behind his head and leaned back so he could rest his boots on the edge of the table while he got comfortable.

He didn't for a moment think the charges would stick. Soon as Re'Altarm showed up tomorrow, the police wouldn't have much of anything they could pin him with.

"Well, make yourself comfortable. You'll be in here a while," she finished, walking towards the door to take her leave.

The boy had walked all day to get here, and only now to find that The Den was closed for business. Those fake ID's would do him little good if he couldn't go to the one place in all of Lutetia City that would probably not care he was a minor. For his age, Gaël looked older than he was. He had started growing dark bits of stubble on his cheeks and chin, and his darker hair and grey eyes made most girls forgive him for his 'bad boy' behavior.

Of course boozing wasn't the only reason he was here. He had needed to get away from his father. And with stolen credit cards, he had traveled all the way back to his home city to party it up, if just for one night.

So he sat on the curve, typing away at his cellphone trying to find other places to go.

It had been two days since the little girl had been missing, since the mysterious murder in the alley of the Den, and since an even more disturbing puzzle to a crime became known to Jeanne.

Needless to say, the woman was stressed. Everything was going down the shitter and absolutely nothing was looking up. If what she'd seen when she peeked into the bag was true...

Another look down in Vargeras, the detective told herself. A walk. A glance. She needed to find something.

It wasn't even remotely funny when the exact something she found confused the ever living shit out of her. The UI for her contact device had been turned on, picking up on a very familiar signal. Her brow creased. She was so incredibly confused that she stopped right in the middle of the road. Several seconds passed before her cell phone started to go off. In a dazed walk, she began to follow the trail.

"Hello?" she answered, flipping open her phone. "Yes. Yes, honey. Yes. What's going on?"

Her heart began to pound. Her pace quickened.

"What?" she spat. "Wait, wait. Honey. Honey, that doesn't make sense. No. No. Yes. No. I'll tell you why," she said, rounding the corner toward the Den, stopping again as the trail ended right where it should have.

Jeanne stared at Gael with both a glower and a look of complete and utter relief.

"Because he's here, honey. I'll call you back." The phone snapped shut, and Jeanne took in a large breath.

"GAEL PRENDERGAST, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?"

The boy didn't have the decency to look startled. Hell, he didn't even look up. He merely closed his eyes tight and wished her away. Unfortunately for him, he didn't have magical abilities. And his mother was a detective.

A ruthless detective.

So when he looked up at her with his grey eyes, it was only the smartest thing in the world to be a smart ass about answering her question.

"Sitting, obviously." He said. His voice was in the middle of changing into the deeper baritones of a man, and he was quite happy that his voice didn't crack in the middle of it.

Still, he figured it was no longer wise to be just sitting. He stood before saying, "And now I'm leaving. Cya!" He then started running down the sidewalk like hell was on his heels.