Long Gone

by Alafair Burke

  The 6 train stopped at Twenty-third Street. It was still early in the afternoon, so foot traffic was light. The young couple across from her moved toward the exit, waiting for the doors to part. The man pushed a loose strand of his girlfriend’s hair behind her ear, and she smiled her thanks. Something about that simple act of thoughtfulness made Alice want to cry.

  The couple stepped from the car, leaving her alone with the homeless man dozing in and out of sleep and a guy who seemed to think earbuds the size of pencil erasers could somehow shield the people around him from the rap music thumping from his iPod. The doors remained open, and Alice realized she was holding her breath again, waiting for the car to be sealed like a protective shell. She did not want to see a police officer step inside. And with both Drew Campbell and Robert Atkinson dead, she was beginning to wonder whether the police might be the least of her worries.

  She allowed herself to exhale when the doors closed. She felt her core flex instinctively, muscle memory formed from years of subway transit, stabilizing her own body, preparing for the abrupt lurch of the train’s movement. But there was no movement. The car remained still. There were no sounds other than the tinny rhymes leaking from the iPod guy’s headphones and the quiet hum of the homeless man’s snore. She was holding her breath yet again, wishing she had waited at Union Square for an express train.

  When the car finally jerked forward, her body was unprepared. She slid all the way into the empty seat beside her, and had never been so thankful for the unceremonious wobbling of a New York City subway ride.

  Just as quickly as she had calmed herself, she felt the hot rush of unmitigated terror when the sliding door at the end of the train opened and a man who looked like the driver of the green Toyota stepped inside.

  She rose from her seat and walked hurriedly toward the opposite end of the car. She could hear his footsteps behind her and wondered if either the homeless man or the iPod guy would help her if she screamed. She pulled at the exit door, realizing she had never tried to walk from car to car on the subway and had no idea how to operate the sliding door.

  She felt the man’s hand on her shoulder. She turned and pressed herself against the door, trying to release herself from his grasp. She could still hear the homeless man’s purr and the iPod guy’s tunes.

  “Help. Someone help?”

  “Shh. Shh. It’s okay. Stop. Just stop.”

  The man’s palms were raised as if he was the one being attacked, but his face was completely calm. Something about his whispered pleas for her to stop resisting was comforting. “My name is Hank Beckman, and I believe you’re innocent.”

  “So you actually saw the woman who was kissing Drew Campbell in the photograph the police showed me?”

  They had completed the 6 train leg of the trip and were continuing their conversation on a bench in Grand Central Terminal, each of them telling the other a one-sided view of the events of the last few days. They were strangers, but somehow the simple fact that this man was an FBI agent who believed she was telling the truth allowed her to share every detail within her knowledge.

  “You mean Travis Larson. There is no Drew Campbell. But, yes, I believe that the woman I saw at Larson’s apartment was the same woman in that photograph. And I believe she was intentionally trying to look like you and had purchased the identical blue coat for exactly that purpose. The human mind is capable of greatness, but we have been trained to process information with efficiency, which can sometimes mean superficially. We grab on to salient identifiers, often at the expense of devoting attention to more nuanced details. It’s one of the reasons why cross-racial eyewitness identifications are less reliable. We see a person of a different race and give disproportionate weight to that one distinctive visual trait without really processing the individual’s true appearance.”

  “So it’s not like this other woman is my identical twin?”

  He shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong: she certainly did resemble you. You probably could see the similarity for yourself in that photograph. But she and Larson were taking advantage of the fact that your hair, if you don’t mind me saying, was the single characteristic that most people would identify first when looking at you. And I assume you bought that blue coat for a reason.”

  “It never fails to get a compliment.”

  “No surprise there. Your coloring—her coloring—with that bright blue? It’s a knockout combination. Any chance that coat’s a specialty item? We could start with that to track down your doppelganger.”

  “Mass-produced in China and sold at department stores all over the country. Sorry.”

  “You shouldn’t have cut it, you know.” He pointed to his head. “Your hair.”

  “The last thing I’m worried about right now are my looks.”

  “That’s not what I mean. If you hadn’t changed your hair, I’d be trying to talk you into going home. It looks really bad that you ran.”

  “I panicked. They had my building surrounded. They were coming to get me. I pictured myself being carried away in handcuffs, and I just couldn’t sit there and let it happen.”

  “They weren’t coming for you. Not yet, anyway. Shannon told me not an hour ago that they were still working on the warrant. It’s definitely in the pike.”

  Lily must have seen a police car on the street outside her building and assumed they were there for her.

  “If you go back now, though, they’ll see what you’ve done to your hair. Changing your appearance is quintessential evidence of consciousness of guilt. That, combined with lies they caught you in about your relationship with Larson? They may as well have a confession.”

  “I never lied to them.”

  “But they think you did. And that new haircut of yours makes their version all the more likely.”

  “I think I liked you better when I thought you were trying to kill me.”

  “I’m just telling you how it is. So tell me what you’re planning to do in Bedford.”

  She had already purchased a ticket in cash. The train was due to leave in twelve minutes. “I’m going to find out why Robert Atkinson was tracking down a police report from there.”

  “Why don’t you just call your brother and ask him what he knows about Atkinson?”

  “Because I have no idea how to get hold of him. He’s cell-only, and I went and took his only phone.” She was also increasingly convinced that he’d been holding something back from her since the very beginning.

  “So you’re going to march into a police station and tell them you’re Alice Humphrey?”

  “No. I’m thinking I’ll say I’m a reporter following up on the story Atkinson was working on.”

  “And what if someone there recognizes you? I assume Bedford’s a small place.”

  “I don’t think I have any choice right now but to take a few calculated risks.”

  He rose from the bench without speaking, reached into his coat pocket, and dangled a set of car keys. “That green Toyota that’s been tailing you should get us up to Bedford just fine. I’ll pull in front of the exit on Lexington in about twenty. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  “Let’s just say I might also be in need of a few calculated risks.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Just as Beckman had predicted, they pulled off 684 at the Bedford exit about an hour after crossing the Triborough Bridge. The plan was for him to go to the police station to ask questions about Robert Atkinson while she drove one town north to Katonah to avoid the chance of being recognized in Bedford.

  “Here.” He handed her a cell phone. “I’ll call you when it’s time to pick me up.”

  “Isn’t there some FBI rule that says you shouldn’t be handing over your phone to a wanted fugitive?”

  “Probably, but I think we can agree I’ve officially left the reservation. That’s a disposable that can’t be traced to you, so let’s keep it that way. Absolutely no calls to anyone you know. The NYPD will be pulling t
heir LUDs.”

  She thought about Jeff and how badly she wanted to contact him. He was supposed to call her when his depositions were over, but she had turned off her phone so the police couldn’t track it. If he didn’t hear from her soon, he was going to think she was having regrets about last night.

  “Their what?”

  “Local usage details. Incoming and outgoing calls. Just don’t call anyone but me, all right? I got one for me, too. The number’s already in there as the last number dialed.”

  She fiddled with the keys to be sure she could find the entry. A chirp escaped from his coat pocket. “See? We’re all set. Call me if there are any problems. Otherwise, you’ll be hearing from me when it’s time to pick me up. No speeding. Come to full stops. Don’t get pulled over. That’s how they caught Ted Bundy.”

  “Great. Now I’m being compared to a serial killer.”

  He rolled his eyes, and she smiled.

  “You’ve told me everything you know? Absolutely everything?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.” She could tell from the way he looked at her that, once again, he believed her. “Agent Beckman?”

  “Call me Hank.”

  “Thank you, Hank.”

  He got out of the car two blocks from the police station, and she crawled across the console to take his place at the wheel, waving before taking the direct route back to the highway, as cautious as a first-time taker of the driving exam.

  Hank had never had reason to step inside the police station in Lolo, Montana, where he was raised, but he imagined it would have looked something like the one in Bedford. With clean concrete steps and upgraded glass windows, the building was not actually old, but had been designed to appear old-fashioned. Small towns did not want to admit that they were home to criminal acts and those who committed them. If they had to have a police station, better it at least be quaint.

  A gray-haired woman sat at the desk nearest to an unstaffed reception window at the building’s entrance. He tapped gently on the glass, and she let out a little yelp.

  “Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to startle you there.”

  “No worries. Guess I let myself get carried away on my Sudoku.” She made her way to the window, no doubt slowed by the fact that her chubby feet looked like two bratwurst forced into her hot pink pumps, color-coordinated to match her black-and-pink-flowered blouse. Up close, he could see that her reading glasses were bedazzled with rhinestones. The photo ID hanging from the New York Giants lanyard around her neck identified her as Gail Richards.

  “I have an aunt who can plow through an entire Sudoku book in three hours straight, then still be searching for more. I tell her she needs to go to Sudoku rehab.”

  “Oh, don’t I know it. What can I do you for today?”

  He flashed his FBI identification. Before he could even get a word out, she was pointing to the back of the building. “Oh, I’ll show you to the detectives.”

  “No, ma’am, this is more likely to be a matter for the folks who sit up here near the window. It’s my understanding that a journalist by the name of Robert Atkinson has been trying to obtain a copy of a police report from you all. I believe it may have been a report from some time ago?”

  “Oh my, yes. That’s not a name I’ll soon forget. He must have called me six different times. First he thought I had the name wrong. Then he said I had the date wrong. Then he seemed to think I was some silly girl who didn’t know her way around our archive files, but I gave him some choice words on that one. Next thing I know, here he waltzes up to the window yesterday—right when I’m trying to close up for the night—claiming that someone’s on the take. Someone destroyed records. Acting like we’re Enron or something, standing around shredding documents just to keep them out of the hands of the important Mr. Atkinson.”

  Hank could suddenly imagine perky Miss Gail with the bedazzled reading glasses tearing out a man’s throat if properly motivated.

  “And what police report was he trying to obtain?”

  “A nonexistent one, if you ask me.”

  “And according to him?”

  She sighed at the mere thought of having to remind herself of the inanity of his request. “At first, all he’d give me was a date. April 18, 1985. Well, it was either late at night on April 18 or sometime April 19 or maybe early in the morning on April 20, which would have been a Sunday. But it had something to do with something that happened on April 18. I told him that we might not be a hotbed of crime up here, but we’d have more than one incident report on a spring weekend, that’s for sure. I asked him for an address or a suspect or the nature of the crime, and he just wasn’t willing to budge. Believe it or not, that was probably his first three phone calls. Then he finally calls back and tells me, fine, the name of the complainant would have been Christie Kinley.”

  Something about the name sounded familiar. He had taken in an ocean of information from Alice Humphrey in the last few hours, but he could hear her voice speaking a similar name during their manic exchange of data. Kinley. It was the last name that was familiar.

  “Do you mean Julie Kinley?” He recalled Alice mentioning a plagiarism claim that ITH had settled with a woman named Julie Kinley. If the woman hadn’t passed away last year, she would have risen to the top of his list of suspects.

  “I was about to say, legal name Julie Kinley, but she was known as Christie. Trust me, that was a name I took note of. I thought maybe Atkinson was playing a joke on me, but apparently the mother named her after the actress Julie Christie.”

  “And you remember all this without notes.” He tried not to go too heavy on the marveling tone, but knew he needed to make up for trying to correct her about the complainant’s first name. “I’d like to have someone at the bureau with that kind of memory.”

  “You darling man, I can’t even tell you what I had for breakfast this morning. This just goes to show you how that Atkinson fellow hounded me. But my job’s my job, so off I go to archives, digging through the paper files. Some people aren’t the best about their dates, you know. April gets in with August. May winds up before March. And I knew I’d never hear the end of it from this guy if I told him we didn’t have the report when in fact we actually did. So, let me tell you, I looked. Hard. And there were no reports filed by Julie or Christie or anyone else named Kinley any time in 1985, or even the spring of ’84 and ’86, which I checked just to be clear. I did not appreciate him suggesting that I hadn’t searched properly.”

  “That’s where the choice words came in, huh?” He flashed a conspiratorial grin.

  “Oh, don’t you know it. Choice indeed. So choice you could cut them with a knife and eat them with Heinz 57 sauce. Don’t tell the mayor, but I’m pretty sure I dropped some bombs you can’t say on the radio.”

  “Sounds like Atkinson deserved it.” He felt bad dishing on the man under the circumstances.

  “Once I told him—in fine detail—just how thorough my work had been, I thought we were over and done with. But sure enough, he showed up here yesterday asking to see the chief. Like the chief of police is just going to march to the front window because Gail says so.”

  He shook his head at the insanity of the suggestion.

  “Then he goes and accuses us of destroying documents.”

  “Us?”

  “Well, and that was the thing, right? He was so sure records had been destroyed, but he refused to say how he was so certain they had ever existed in the first place. I finally had to get a sergeant to deal with him, but you know I was listening in.”

  Hank had no doubt at all.

  “Sergeant Jenner’s sort of shining him on a bit, basically trying to get rid of the man. But then old Atkinson blurts out that he knows the police report was filed because he’d seen it before. So the sergeant asks the questions anyone with half a brain would ask. If you read the report, why can’t you tell us more about the nature of the crime or the name of the suspect or something to help us know what in the world you’re talking about?”

&nb
sp; “And what did Atkinson have to say about that?”

  “Absolutely nothing. He left in a huff, yelling to the sergeant that there’d been a payoff. That the girl got paid. The cops had gotten paid. And he’d gotten sandbagged.”

  “Atkinson said that he had been sandbagged?”

  “Yep. I remember his exact words. He said GD-it, but, you know, he actually said the GD part. He said, GD-it, that tramp got paid off. The cops got paid off. And all I got was f-in’ sandbagged. But instead of f-in’, it was—”

  He nodded to make clear she didn’t have to fill in that particular blank.

  “Did Mr. Atkinson do something wrong?”

  “No, ma’am. Why do you ask?”

  “You never said why you were here. I figured he was in trouble. I’d be happy if I never had to deal with him again, that’s for sure.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be seeing him around here any time soon.”

  Alice drove the route from Katonah south to Bedford just as cautiously as she had taken it northbound. Her new ally, Hank Beckman, took a spot in the passenger seat.

  “So, bad news first: no police report.”

  When her new disposable phone had rung, she’d allowed herself a brief moment of hope that he might declare their mission accomplished. But when he told her to meet him outside the Shell Station off the Old Post Road, she could tell from his briskness that there would be no easy answers.

  “After this week, only a photograph of me on a police report with someone else’s name would count as bad news. Is there good news?”