Read Chapter 18: The Investigation

The gendarmerie in Bayeux smelled of stale coffee and floor polish. A young officer with a clipboard looked up as the three sisters entered, his expression shifting from boredom to mild alarm at the sight of three women advancing on his desk in unison.

“We need to see the missing person files,” Camille said, sliding her lawyer’s identification across the counter. “From 1987. A man named Julien Marchand.”

The officer blinked. “That’s… that’s over thirty years ago. Those files would be in archives.”

“Then I suggest you find them,” Camille said, her voice carrying the precise weight of someone who had spent a decade making people do things they didn’t want to do. “I’m not leaving until I see what your predecessor wrote about my father’s disappearance.”

Élodie hung back near the door, arms wrapped around herself. Inès moved to a row of plastic chairs and sat down heavily, pulling the locket from her collar and rubbing it between her fingers. She’d been doing that since Le Havre—touching it like a rosary, like it might give her answers if she only pressed hard enough.

The officer disappeared through a door marked ARCHIVES. They waited. Fifteen minutes passed. Twenty. Camille paced the length of the small lobby, her heels clicking against the linoleum.

“Do you think they’ll have anything?” Élodie asked quietly.

“They have something,” Camille said. “They always have something. The question is whether they’re willing to show it to us.”

The door opened. The officer returned, holding a thin manila folder with a crease down the middle like it had been folded and forgotten. He set it on the counter but kept his palm on it.

“This is a closed case, ma’am. I’m not sure I’m authorized to—”

“That file is thirty-four years old,” Camille said, stepping forward. “The statute of limitations on privacy protections for a missing person case expired a decade ago. Under French civil code, Article 9, the right to respect for private life—” She paused, watching his face. “—don’t worry, I’m not going to recite the whole thing. What I am going to do is call my colleague at the Cour de Cassation if you make me wait another minute.”

The officer’s hand lifted. He pushed the folder across the counter.

Camille opened it. Élodie and Inès gathered around her shoulder as she flipped through the sparse contents. A single page of typed report. A form with boxes checked. A photograph clipped to the inside cover—their father, younger, unsmiling, standing in front of the manor with a bicycle.

“1976,” Inès read. “That’s ten years before he disappeared.”

The report was dated November 1987. Two months after their father’s last known sighting. The typed text was dry, official, the language of bureaucracy emptying itself of human tragedy.

*Subject: Julien Marchand. Reported missing by spouse, Sylvie Marchand, October 15, 1987. No evidence of foul play. Subject’s vehicle recovered at Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris, with personal effects intact. No further leads. Case closed November 1987. Reason for closure: Subject voluntarily abandoned family.*

Élodie made a small sound, like a wounded animal. “Abandoned. They wrote *abandoned*.”

“The investigation was closed six weeks after he vanished,” Inès said, her voice rising. “Six weeks. They didn’t even try.”

Camille read the report again, then a third time. Her finger traced the signature at the bottom. Officer Jacques Moreau. She looked up at the young officer behind the counter.

“I want to see the full case file. The investigative notes, the witness statements, the communications log from the initial inquiry.”

The officer shifted his weight. “That’s all there is, ma’am. Closed cases from that era, they didn’t keep much. The station in Caen had a fire in 2005—lost a lot of the regional archives.”

“Convenient,” Inès muttered.

Camille turned back to the folder. She pulled out the photograph, studied her father’s face. He looked younger than she remembered—thinner, with a beard she’d never seen in family photos. His eyes held something she couldn’t name. Not sadness. Caution.

“Who took this?” she asked.

The officer shrugged. “File doesn’t say.”

“And this report—who filed it? My mother?”

The officer leaned over, scanning the page. “Statement taken from a neighbor. Madame Yvette Rousseau, of the adjoining property.” He looked up. “She claimed your father had been planning to leave for months. Said he’d been seen arguing with your mother in the garden the week before he went missing.”

Camille felt the floor shift beneath her. Inès grabbed her arm.

“A neighbor,” Élodie said flatly. “Not our mother. A neighbor said he was planning to leave. And that was enough for the police to close the case?”

Camille pulled out her phone. She photographed every page of the file, then looked at the officer again.

“I’m reopening this case,” she said. “I have grounds. New evidence has emerged suggesting my father did not voluntarily abandon his family but was involved in an ongoing criminal investigation at the time of his disappearance. That makes this a matter of potential witness tampering or obstruction of justice. I want a formal request submitted to the central records division in Paris for any communications between this gendarmerie and the Ministry of the Interior regarding Julien Marchand, 1987 through 1990.”

The officer stared at her. “That’s… that’s going to take weeks. Maybe months.”

“Then you’d better get started.” Camille pulled out her card, set it on the counter. “I’ll expect your report within seventy-two hours.”

She turned and walked out, leaving the folder on the counter. Élodie and Inès followed.

The rain had started again—a fine Normandy drizzle that misted her face as she stood on the steps of the gendarmerie. Inès joined her, tucking the locket back under her shirt.

“So,” Inès said quietly. “A neighbor. Not Mom. The police took a neighbor’s word over hers.”

“The police took whatever word a lazy investigator could file quickly,” Camille said. “They wanted it closed. It was closed.”

“But why?” Élodie asked from behind her. “Why wouldn’t Mom correct them? Why would she let them call it abandonment?”

Camille closed her eyes. She’d been asking herself that question since she was twelve years old, standing in the kitchen of the manor as her mother wept over a phone call from the police, insisting her husband hadn’t left, wouldn’t leave, would never leave. And yet she’d signed the paperwork accepting the closure. Camille had seen it, years later, in her mother’s files. Signed without protest.

“Because she knew,” Camille said slowly, opening her eyes. “She knew he hadn’t abandoned us. She knew he was gone for a reason. But she couldn’t say why without putting him in danger. So she let them close the case. She let the world think what it wanted to think.”

Inès was quiet for a long moment. Then: “And she kept the locket. The one with N’s picture. She kept it because it was connected to him.”

“I need to get inside his letters again,” Camille said. “I didn’t read enough of them. The handwriting—if we could compare it to official records, to bank documents, to anything he signed before he disappeared, we might be able to trace what he was doing between his last letter and whatever brought him back here.”

She turned back toward the gendarmerie. The young officer was still standing at the counter, holding her card, looking lost.

Camille walked back in. “One more thing,” she said. “My father used an American investigation firm’s address as a forwarding service. I want you to check the US records network—NCIC, missing persons, any cross-border alerts that might have been filed under the name Julien Marchand or any variation thereof. If he used his real name in the States, there’ll be a trail. Financial records. Employment history. Something.”

The officer swallowed. “I’ll have to request access from the international liaison office. That could take—”

“I don’t care how long it takes,” Camille said. “But I’ll be checking with you every day until it’s done. You have my number.”

She left him there, the thin folder still open on the counter, the rain now falling harder against the window glass.