JAI MAHMOOD:
Yeah, I started sleeping in a storage locker, illegally, out in Hale near the airport. To give you some idea of the place, there was another homeless guy staying there who told me a story. He said the garage I was in had belonged to this bloke who used to come out and visit it most days. He got done for speeding or drunk driving or something. Nothing serious, but enough to get him put away for a few weeks. Only it was high summer, and this smell started coming out of the garage while he was away. When they broke the door down to get in, they found this mentally ill girl he’d kidnapped and had chained up in there. She starved to death because he never told anyone he had her. Look, I don’t know if that’s actually true. I hope to fuck not, but my point is, in that place, it felt plausible.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
The next day, when my boots were dry, I pulled out all the rolled-up newspaper and put it on the fire ready for that night. Then I went out to work and broke my back trying not to think about it. I came home ten hours later, showered and went down to the bar. I got drunk on whisky, which I never did, then went back up to my room with every intention of starting that fire. It was the first time the story had crossed my path since I’d left, so it felt like a test, and one my life might depend on passing. I built the logs up around the newspaper, got it going, then left the room.
ANDREW FLOWERS:
I received a fairly rude awakening that second term when the bursar got in touch with me about unpaid bills. My tuition and my rent checks had both bounced, were both overdue, and I didn’t have the cash in my account to cover them. I called my father but couldn’t get him on the phone for a few days—nothing unusual there.
Finally, I got a tinkle back from Lipson, speaking on dear old Dad’s behalf. He was apoplectic with me for not signing the statement the police had presented against Jai. As he saw it, I was harboring a criminal, keeping the story alive, and associating his name with something unsavory. And look, by that point, I probably agreed with him. I’d put my balls in a vice for Jai, and he’d screwed it shut. Then he’d pissed off a few days later without even saying goodbye. So I can’t pretend I stood my ground as a principled man. I was quite ready to capitulate and sell out, I just didn’t get the opportunity. Lipson said my father was cutting me off. I believe the precise phraseology was, “If you want to be on your own, then so be it.”
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
I lasted about five seconds, then went back in and pulled the ball of paper I’d seen Zoe’s face on out of the fire. It was a bit burnt but basically readable. And just to get it over with, I opened it up, saw it was from a French newspaper, Le Monde. Then I started laughing and drunk-laughing with relief, because the girl in the picture wasn’t Zoe at all. It was just some girl who looked like her. I mean, a lot like her, but it wasn’t my sister.
My French went about as far as ordering a baguette, so I held on to the story. Like, I was curious about it. I had to wait a week or something until I heard someone speak French in the pub so I could find out what it was all about. When I flattened the paper out on the table, the man I showed it to went “Ah,” like it was big news over there and he already knew the case. I asked about it, and he told me about this Jean Boivin, this millionaire who’d faked his own death in Paris. He’d burned his house down and upped sticks to Mexico, then got his wife to claim on the life insurance. What made it super dark was that the house had burned down with three dead bodies inside: one that was originally thought to be him, one that was thought to be his son, and one that was thought to be his nineteen-year-old daughter, Lucille. Lucille was the girl in the picture, the one who looked just like Zoe. They got rumbled, and the kids were both legally adults, so all three of them were in jail for it in France. It was the most news I’d had in months and basically blew my hair back a bit. I thanked the man and walked off with my shred of newspaper, then stopped and looked down at it. I saw that the house fire had been on December 24, Christmas Eve, 2011. I mean, I could understand that much.
Roughly one week after Zoe had gone missing…
I went back and asked the man if they knew who the bodies belonged to, these ones that had burned up in the fire, if they’d been identified by anyone. He shook his head, said no, it was a tragedy. People thought they were probably vagrants who’d been kidnapped or tricked into it, people who’d been targeted because of their physical similarities to the family.
And like that, I knew what had happened to me when I got grabbed outside Fifth Avenue. I knew why the men in that van went all weird when I told them about my fucked knee. They didn’t care if I was in pain or found it hard to get around or even if I needed an amputation. They cared because I’d said I had a titanium screw in my leg, and the girl they needed to replace didn’t. I got this moment of lightness. People at the bar thought I’d fainted because I had to lean on something, but it was more like elation. I wasn’t insane. I wasn’t living in this mad world where anything could happen, where nothing meant anything or ever made sense. I felt light until I thought about the body that had actually been burned up in the fire, whoever it was they’d eventually used to replace Lucille. And then all that lightness and elation went away, because like that, I knew where my sister was.
23.
“Comedy, Tragedy”
Kim travels to Paris dead set on learning the truth about what happened to her on November 8, 2011, and about what might have happened to Zoe in the early hours of December 17 of the same year.
KIMBERLY NOLAN:
Those men must have wanted Zoe all along—that’s all I could think about on the flight out there. She walked into Fifth Avenue wearing that bright-red jacket, and I walked out in it. So when they picked me up, when they threw me outside the van, when they pointed me at a hole in the ground and set me off to walk into it, when they said they’d fuck me and kill me if I told anyone…
They must have wanted Zoe all along.
At the time, it felt typical. The defining moment of my life, and it hadn’t even been about me. So I applied for a credit card, got it a week or so later and booked a flight to Paris. I wanted to go and make it about me. I wanted my fucking life back.
HENRI CARON, Business associate of Jean Boivin:
The first thing you must know about Jean Boivin is that this was no builder, no property tycoon, not as La Croix or Les Echos would have you believe. This was a rock star. A man who was able to live a life without limits, fearlessly and guided by his own principles. He said, “Bien faire et laisser dire.” [Do well and let （them） speak.] I know him first by reputation alone, as a man famous in Paris for growing roses from goat shit.